Butch Baldassari

Butch Baldassari elevated the mandolin to new heights of melodic expression. Once affiliated with Lonesome Standard Time, he pursued fresh avenues for his six-stringed instrument through independent releases and projects with the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble. Since 1995 he has performed alongside Richard Greene’s Grass Is Greener, and he also directs his Butch Baldassari Trio, which includes guitarist Gene Ford and mandocello player John Hedgecoth.

Drawing equal inspiration from the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, and Bill Monroe, Baldassari first played guitar alongside his brother Buster in garage bands of the late 1960s. Attendance at the 1972 Philadelphia Folk Festival prompted his transition to the mandolin.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in music at the University of Scranton, Baldassari relocated to Las Vegas to undertake postgraduate work at the University of Nevada. There he met three musicians assembling the tradition-centered bluegrass group Weary Hearts and accepted an invitation to join; the ensemble captured the International Band Competition sponsored by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America in 1989, after which its debut album, By Heart, appeared.

Baldassari settled in Nashville in 1985 and kept probing the mandolin’s range. While at the Classical Mandolin Society convention in 1990 he envisioned the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble, an eleven-piece ensemble comprising mandola, mandocello, guitar, and bass. Following four months of preparation, the group premiered at Nashville’s Dark Horse Theater in October 1991.

Baldassari maintained involvement in additional ventures. Between 1992 and 1996, as a member of Lonesome Standard Time, he contributed to three recordings: Lonesome River Band, Mighty Lonesome, and Lonesome as It Gets. He also joined innovative bluegrass fiddler Richard Greene and the Grass Is Greener for Wolves A’ Howlin’ in 1996 and Sales Tax Toddle in 1997.

Parallel to his performing career, Baldassari taught, leading bluegrass mandolin workshops in Nashville and assuming the role of adjunct associate professor of mandolin at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in 1996.