Mountain Grass Unit Arrives in the Summer of 2025

It’s not just country music that is having a moment. It’s also bluegrass that’s on a meteoric rise, with a handful of up-and-coming bands that are poised to shape the future of the subgenre rising meteorically as well, and looking to take bluegrass to the next level. Chief among them might be Mountain Grass Unit out of Birmingham, Alabama that has been setting audiences ablaze across the United States this summer.

Some who’ve been following the outfit through their intermittent touring and song/EP releases since 2021 might be patting themselves on the back and saying “Welcome to the party, where you been?” But with lead guitar player Luke Black and mandolin player Drury Anderson graduating from the Berklee College of Music in May, this summer has become the moment for Mountain Grass Unit to take the full-time plunge into the professional realm.

They’re joined by Sam Wilson on bass, and the band’s newest member, Josiah Nelson on fiddle, who also happens to be a music professor/instructor at East Tennessee State University. Luckily for Mountain Grass Unit, they’re joining the professional ranks well-seasoned. In 2024 they performed at DelFest and Winter Wondergrass among other events. But the summer of 2025 feels like it will go down as the moment Mountain Grass Unit arrived.

They certainly made an impact at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival the 3rd week of June. Many of the Telluride faithful might have not known the name at first, but they sure do now. Mountain Grass Unit’s week started off playing the free “pregrass” show Wednesday evening in the Mountain Village resort community just a short gondola ride from Telluride proper. The crowd loved them, and would make seeing the rest of their performances over the week a priority.

Mountain Grass Unit have that perfect blend of a traditional bluegrass foundation, with the fearlessness to take it other places while still being tethered to the roots. The legendary Tony Rice is often cited as being indicative of their sound, which makes sense since guitar player Luke Black cites Rice as a primary influence, specifically referencing Tony’s 1979 album Manzanita as a compass point.

“It’s just got so many standard bluegrass songs, with super iconic breaks from all the instruments, while there’s also the jazzgrass, spacegrass flavor in there as well,” Black said in an interview with Telluride’s KOTO-FM during the festival. “That record has been a huge inspiration on me.”

Another huge inspiration on Mountain Grass Unit for their Thursday (6-19) afternoon opening set at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival was Telluride itself. Performing to a massive and engaged crowd of some 10,000 people—and to what has been cited as the greatest stage view in all of music—Mountain Grass Unit was definitely feeling it.

“Stepping out on that stage was unreal,” says Luke Black. “Playing to those mountains and that massive crowd—playing to those people was just insane. I feel like you can come up with different stuff with that scenery, and feeling that energy from the crowd.”

That Teulluride inspiration might have been partly to blame for one particular run Luke took on his guitar. A simple 25-second snippet of the guitar solo has since gone super viral on social media, with 1.2 million views on Facebook alone, and someone named William Apostol chiming in on the video with, “They’re the real deal!” (That’s the real name of Billy Strings, btw).

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While watching Luke Black, you got the premonition that the guitar Gods of our era might turn out not be rock or blues guys, or country prickers. The very well might be the bluegrass performers inspired by Tony Rice, and contemporaries like Billy Strings.

According to the band, the key for them is keeping their enthusiasm alive for the music. They do this in part by working in popular covers with their original bluegrass music, both from the bluegrass realm and beyond. On Friday of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival they played a third show on the Elks Park stage in Telluride town proper. There’s perhaps never been a bigger crowd bunched into the park to see a performance, while Mountain Grass got to all huddle around a single microphone old school bluegrass style. Playing songs like “Tulsa Time” endeared them to the audience.

Fiddle player Josiah Nelson who’s originally from Colorado says, “I used to play a dinner theater in Estes Park, and I remember my boss told me that if you ever stop having fun playing music it’s time to stop. I always have that in the back of my mind.”

Drury Anderson on mandolin says, “Anywhere we go, when it comes to a festival like this, you’re there for a reason. People bought tickets because they want to see you. As cheesy as it sounds, the most important thing is that you enjoy yourself. I think if you show up and you enjoy yourself, the audience will understand that and also enjoy themselves.”

Bass player Sam Wilson says, “We’ve always been the younger guys. We’ve always been opening for other bands. Luckily enough we get to be around a lot of these bigger bands. And they always say that this time we’re in right now is the most fun because you get to do these firsts—for example, Telluride this weekend. [It’s] the first time we’re here. They told me that looking back, you should appreciate your firsts because you only get a first one time. This is the fun part because everything’s new, everything’s exciting.”

Though Mountain Grass Unit is getting huge opportunities this summer—including opening for the Kitchen Dwellers at the Ryman Auditorium just a few days after they departed Telluride, as well as the massive FairWell Fest in Oregon in July—they’re still an up-and-coming band playing opening sets.

“I would compare touring for people who don’t tour to backpacking,” says Sam Wilson. It turns out multiple members of the band were also in scouting growing up. “It’s cool, the adventures awesome, you see lots of cool stuff. But at the end of the night, for our situation, you’re sleeping on an air mattress, or a cot, or the ground. We don’t have a tour bus or anything like that. We’ve got a little white van, little trailer, and just make it to your next roadside inn, and call it a night. But that’s the fun part of it because you get so many more fun memories out of it. If it was comfortable, we might not have as many crazy stories.”

But a tour bus and headliner slots might be coming for Mountain Grass Unit sooner than later. “The business side of things is kind of weird, jumping into it right out of college,” Luke Black says. “But I feel like we have a good team around us, helping each other and communicating with everyone is super important in this industry especially.”

Drury Anderson adds, “We like to see progress. And as long as we see people being passionate about our music, and we feel the same, we will continue as long as we can.”

With the trajectory Mountain Grass Unit is on, it feels like they will be going for a long, long time.

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Mountain Grass Unit’s Upcoming 2025 Tour Dates:

Jul 10, 2025- Tipitina’s – New Orleans, LA

Jul 11, 2025 – White Oak Music Hall – Houston, TX

Jul 12, 2025 – Club Dada – Dallas, TX

Jul 13, 2025 – Parish – Austin, TX

Jul 15, 2025 – Taos Mesa Brewing Tap Room – Taos, NM

Jul 17, 2025- Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT

Jul 19, 2025- FairWell Festival – Redmond, OR

Jul 22, 2025 – Felton Music Hall – Felton, CA

Jul 23, 2025 – Rickshaw Stop – San Francisco, CA

Jul 25, 2025- The Grove House – Mariposa, CA

Jul 26, 2025 – The Mint – Los Angeles, CA

Jul 27, 2025- Soda Bar – San Diego, CA

Jul 28, 2025 – Valley Bar – Phoenix, AZ

Jul 31, 2025 – The Basement at Oskar Blues – Colorado Springs, CO

Aug 1, 2025 – Mishawaka Amphitheatre – Bellvue, CO

Aug 2, 2025 – Mishawaka Amphitheatre – Bellvue, CO

Aug 3, 2025 – Strings Music Festival – Steamboat Springs, CO

Aug 5, 2025 – The Pub Station Taproom – Billings, MT

Aug 7, 2025 – Knitting Factory – Boise, ID

Aug 8, 9, 2025 – Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival – Alta, WY

Aug 12, 2025 – Belly Up Aspen – Aspen, CO

Aug 14, 2025 – Pickin’ In The Park – Paonia, CO

Aug 15, 2025 – Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom – Denver, CO

Aug 16, 2025 – The Lariat – Buena Vista, CO

Aug 19, 2025 – Beer City Music Hall – Oklahoma City, OK

Aug 20, 2025 – Rose Music Hall – Columbia, MO

Aug 22, 2025 – The Lyric Oxford – Oxford, MS

Aug 23, 2025 – Georgia Theatre – Athens, GA

Aug 24, 2025 – Barley’s Tap Room – Knoxville, TN

Aug 26, 2025 – Cat’s Cradle – Carrboro, NC

Aug 28, 2025 – The Southern – Charlottesville, VA

Aug 29, 2025 – The Atlantis – Washington, DC

Aug 29, 2025 – Aug 31, 2025 – Rhythm & Roots Festival – Charlestown, RI

Sep 3, 2025 – 118 North – Wayne, PA

Sep 4, 2025 – Hill Country Live – New York, NY

Sep 5, 2025 – The Sinclair – Cambridge, MA

Sep 6, 2025 – Portland House of Music and Events – Portland, ME

Sep 7, 2025 – Higher Ground Showcase Lounge – South Burlington, VT

Sep 12 -14, 2025 – Borderland Music Festival – East Aurora, NY

Sep 19, 2025 – Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion – Bristol, TN

Sep 20, 2025 – IBMA Bluegrass Live! 2025 – Chattanooga, TN

Sep 25 – Sep 28, 2025 – Boats & Bluegrass Festival – Winona, MN

Sep 27, 2025 – LedgeStone Vineyards – Greenleaf, WI

Oct 8 – 12, 2025 – Hillberry “The Harvest Moon Festival” – Eureka Springs, AR

Oct 10, 2025 – 1884 Lounge at Minglewood Hall – Memphis, TN

Oct 11, 2025 – Iron Hills Country – Birmingham, AL

Nov 13 – 15, 2025 – Sunshine Hootenanny Music & Art Festival – Brooksville, FL

Dec 11-15, 2025 – Strings & Sol 2025 – Puerto Morelos, Q.R.

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