Dave Kline & The Mountain Folk Band Release “Our Grass” to Celebrate 45 Years of Involvement with Bluegrass Music

from Dave Kline Productions

In the fall of 2024 and throughout 2025, Pennsylvania-based Dave Kline & The Mountain Folk Band is celebrating 45 years of presenting, promoting, writing, and performing bluegrass music by releasing this seventh album, “Our Grass,” on the Mountain Laurel label.

“Our Grass” by Dave Kline & The Mountain Folk Band has been released worldwide and is available now for streaming and downloading on all major digital platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Apple iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, etc., via this link: https://daveklinethemountainfolkband.hearnow.com/our-grass.

The album features the superb musicianship of Travis “The Mad Fiddler” Wetzel, Keith Kupp, and Dave Kline, all veterans of the Pennsylvania bluegrass and folk music scene and beyond for decades. Dave Kline is a Pennsylvania-based producer, writer, photographer, composer, lyricist, singer, songwriter, bandleader, researcher, entertainer, and retired newspaper, radio, TV, and Internet business executive.

Offering seven songs, two ballads, and seven tunes comprised of 11 new original pieces by Dave Kline & The Mountain Folk Band, with five covers of musicians, bands, and songs the band likes, “Our Grass” delivers exactly what it sounds like; bluegrass that comes from the heart and minds of a band which conveys respect for Mr. Monroe’s vision and traditions, but isn’t shy about working material from other genres into the bluegrass style.

The album also features a tune written by Bill Monroe but never recorded by him called “The Reading, Pennsylvania Breakdown.” Inspired by a visit and concert performance at Reading, Pennsylvania’s City Park Bandshell, July 11, 1992, where he was working with Dave Kline, who was the host and producer of the long-running, award-winning, syndicated Mountain Folk radio and web show at the time, Mr. Monroe wrote the tune and told Dave that he hoped to perform it on the Grand Ole Opry “some day.” During a backstage conversation, Mr. Monroe told Dave about the tune and then gave Dave permission to record the tune live that evening, and that original recording is preserved at this YouTube link: https://youtu.be/VVgTnOzbS04?si=e5ZDWMoqZqZr4ItN.

Monroe told Dave he was moved to write the tune by the beauty of Reading’s City Park and its glorious mountain, Mt. Penn. Mr. Monroe asked the audience to decide if they liked the new tune. The audience, a huge gathering numbering in the thousands, gave the Father of Bluegrass Music a standing ovation after he and his band performed the new tune.

It is in honor of Mr. Monroe and that special moment in time back in 1992, that Dave Kline & The Mountain Folk Band proudly present their version of this mostly unknown Bill Monroe tune with a hope that the tune lives on in the bluegrass music collective.

The tracks on the “Our Grass” album include…

• Here Comes the Train – 5:50
• Gring’s Hill Pass – 2:39
• Happy Thoughts – 2:30
• Reading Pennsylvania Breakdown – 4:28
• Ballad of the Ringgold Band – 3:19
• South Mountain Drive – 3:16
• Eighteen Eighty Three – 4:27
• McKnight’s Gap – 5:37
• Dark Blue Side of the Rails – 3:54
• Ridgeway Romp – 2:08
• Winter Storm – 3:24
• The Ballad of Mary Coffey – 6:19
• Eat That Cabbage Raw – 2:17
• I’m on Fire – 2:13
• Indian War Whoop – 2:21
• Old Town Road Wurms Starship Trooper – 5:38

A limited number of CDs will be produced and sold at the band’s live appearances throughout 2025.

Over the past 45 years, the David L. Kline Family Mountain Folk Music Scholarship Fund, administered by the 501c3 Reading Musical Foundation, has raised more than $115,000 for use in providing music learning scholarships to students of bluegrass, folk, mountain, and related acoustic music. A portion of each album sale goes into this fund.

Mountain Laurel Productions #102124

Cover design and art by Bill Coughlin, Bob Yost, and Dave Kline.

All songs, ballads, and tunes written by David L. Kline, New Classic Music, BMI, Copyright 2024, All Rights Reserved.

Happy Thoughts by MO7S, Reading Pennsylvania Breakdown by Bill Monroe, I’m on Fire by Bruce Springsteen, and Indian War Whoop by Hoyt Ming & The Pep Steppers.

Recording engineer is Keith Kupp at Kupptone Studio, Adamstown, PA

Executive producer is Dave Kline

The musicians are Keith Kupp on banjo, lead guitar, upright bass, dobro, and vocals; Travis Wetzel on fiddle, mandolin, and vocals; Dave Kline on rhythm guitar and vocals.

Father of four and grandfather of nine, Dave Kline has won numerous prestigious awards for his newspaper chronicles about folklife, his radio and web shows, his original music, and such. Highlights include BEST ORIGINAL SONG, “Hay Road,” from the Pennsylvania Association of Songwriters, Composers, and Lyricists; BEST ORIGINAL RADIO SHOW SERIES, “The Mountain Folk Show,” Berks Arts Pagoda Award for life achievement.

Dave’s signature song, which he uses to promote Pennsylvania at home and in Europe, is called “My Pennsylvania Home.” Here’s a YouTube link to that song: https://youtu.be/2Wfg2__tZT4?si=9dO2CEUaFt7yoceJ.

For more information, contact daveklineproductions@gmail.com.

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Source: bctv