Ron Thomason

American bluegrass musician, songwriter and composer, born September 5, 1944 in Russell County, Virginia. He is the leader of Dry Branch Fire Squad a superb bluegrass band, formed 1976, operating out of Ohio. After graduating from Ohio University in Athens in 1967, he settled in the Springfield area and began teaching school as well as playing in a band that included Frank Wakefield and Howard Aldridge. He also worked with Jack Casey, Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, and Lee Allen’s Dew Mountain Boys. In 1976, he started the Dry Branch Fire Squad, a force around the Dayton area before becoming prominent on the national circuit and as Rounder recording artists. Thomason later relocated to Colorado. In addition to being an excellent mandolin player and having an eerie singing voice that can evoke the lonesome mountain sound like Ralph Stanley, Ron is also a bluegrass humorist who uses satire to comment on bluegrass, the world situation, and life itself. His humor is reflected in a little booklet he put out in 1979, Lonesome Is a Car On Blocks. He is also the featured act of two bluegrass festivals, Grey Fox and High Mountain Hay Fever.