Banjoman Jamie Blair's Homepage

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The Home of Banjoman

Jamie Blair

Hear my band BLUE HILL play GroundSpeed in Real Audio.

Meet the Blair Family

Meet BLUE HILL

Meet OHOP VALLEY BOYS

My RESUME

Artist Profiles

James Ray Blair

James Ray Blair (Jamie) was born on 1970 in Georgetown, Ohio, of Scotch-Irish parents who had moved from Eastern Kentucky to find better employment and living conditions. They took with them their love for bluegrass music and passed it on to their son. Jamie has always known someone who played bluegrass and began playing banjo at the tender age of eight. His father took him to the many festivals in the area where he would get to jam backstage with the likes of Don Reno, Little Roy Lewis, JD Crowe, and others. He began playing professionally with various groups at the age of nine and played with The Bluegrass Freightliners until graduating from high school in 1988. While attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach Florida, Jamie played bluegrass during summer breaks with Jim McCall and the Walker Mountain Boys. Also, during this time 1991 Jamie helped form the Red Line Express, a group that placed third in the 1992 Southeast Bluegrass Band Competition sponsored by Pizza Hut. Later that year Jamie enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. While there, Jamie learned that "Fifty miles ain't nothin' to a Texan" when he joined a group called the Cross County Blend. CCB is a traditional bluegrass band whose members live so far apart they have to drive fifty miles and cross a county line just to practice. Jamie is still on active duty with the United States Army and lives in Spanaway, Washington. He is playing hard drive banjo with the OHOP Valley Boys and another group called Blue Hill. At Winter Grass 1998 Blue Hill placed second in the Northwest Bluegrass Band Competition sponsored by Pizza Hut.

Jamie's first banjo was a gold plated ODE that his parents bought for him in 1980. During a visit to South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, in July, 1997 Jamie met Scott Vestal and purchased one of Scott's custom made `Stealth' banjos.

Jamie's style varies between a hard driving traditional sound to a mixture of melodic and blues. When you head for the parking lot at a festival and are instinctively drawn to a certain banjo sound, you'll find Jamie there. At three o'clock in the morning when you finally find the jam with the sound you've been yearning for all day, Jamie will be there. And when you get there, Jamie will make sure that you're included in the jam. It's just the way he is. He's just like his mom and dad. Down home to the bone.

Artist Profile by Thomas E. Murphy

My banjos

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Updated 10/01/98