Bob Mason Sends the Audience in Stitches on “The Hook”

When you talk about “discovering” musical talent, you tend to think of young up-and-comers you’ve never heard of before looking to make their name in the business, hoping to launch a decades-long career. When Bob Mason walked up on the stage of The Hook, he already had one of those. It just happens to be it was a new discovery for many.

Bob Mason has been playing in a bluegrass outfit called the Piper Road Spring Band for 52 years. “We started when we were 4 years old,” he jokes. They played the Grand Ole Opry in 1978. They toured with Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt among other bluegrass greats. “We played every bluegrass festival. Played a lot in the Midwest … We didn’t want to be a string band, because everyone was a string band. So we were a SPRING band,” Bob explain.

Bob Mason is the mandolin player for the Spring Band originally from Wisconsin. Bob and his friends started in music as rock n’ rollers. But when they heard the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s legendary 1972 bluegrass album featuring major bluegrass and country legends called Will The Circle Be Unbroken, they got turned onto the acoustic discipline. They heard that Bill Monroe was playing at a club down in Chicago, and went to see him play. The whole band sat in front of Bill Monroe and were blown away.

“You boys should be playing bluegrass,” is what the Father of Bluegrass told the bunch of long-haired hippies when they walked up to him during the break. So on the way home, they decided to take Bill Monroe up on his offer. “We didn’t know bluegrass and we didn’t have bluegrass instruments. But we never let anything like that stop us! We were really bad when we started, but everybody loved us, and we said, ‘Hey, this works!’ Then we got better. And we never let success get in our way … because we never really had any,” Bob jokes.

But Bob didn’t just save his humor for the commentary on The Hook. He performed what might be an undiscovered cult classic called “Chunky Dunkin'”—a slightly different take on skinny dipping that had the audience in stitches, as well as the panel members Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon, and award-winning songwriter Caitlin Cannon.

Young and old, The Hook looks to give a platform to entertaining songs and songwriters who otherwise might not have one. And though Bob Mason might not be the next hot up-and-comer, he definitely was a worthy discovery during the taping of the pilot episode back in 2025.

The next installment of The Hook will happen at The 5 Spot in Nashville on March 8th. Established, amateur, first-time, or veteran, all songwriters are invited to sign up to get an opportunity to perform. For more information, visit savingcountrymusic.com/thehook.