Doyle Lawson learned bluegrass as an 11-year-old in a rural Tennessee living room, holding a borrowed mandolin and picking Bill Monroe's parts out of a single-speaker radio broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry. Born in Fordtown in 1944 and raised in Sneedville, he taught himself mandolin, banjo, and guitar by ear, then moved to Nashville in 1963, where his first major job was playing banjo for Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys.

This episode covers his 16-year apprenticeship with Jimmy Martin, J.D. Crowe's Kentucky Mountain Boys, and the Country Gentlemen, including backing Senator Robert Byrd on Mountain Fiddler in 1977, before he formed Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver in 1979 and released Rock My Soul and Heavenly Treasures on Sugar Hill. The hosts explain microtonal a cappella arranging, how the band survived the departure of Randy Graham, ...