Three On a String spurned stardom, found something else
By John Archibald | jarchibald@al.com
Birmingham, AL
There was a moment in the early 1990s when Three On a String could have reached for the brass ring.
The Birmingham trio was asked to bring their clean humor and tight musicality to Branson, Mo., to play eight shows a week for a six month stretch in front of contacts and eyeballs and opportunities that would surely, they were told, change their lives.
But founding member Bobby Horton had children starting middle school. He looked at the band he had already loved for two decades, and he looked at that six month commitment. And he said "No."
"I was willing to step aside," he said. "But I live in Birmingham."
To his surprise, band mates Jerry and Brad Ryan looked at their lives, too. Birmingham held their hearts and their homes and most importantly their families.
"Our life is here," Jerry Ryan said.
So they decided to stay put.
Was there discussion and concern and worry that it was the right choice? Oh, you bet.
Has there been regret since?
Not a plugged nickel's worth. The three just laughed, as they are wont to do.
"I was glad to find out they felt the same way," Horton said. "We are here. We are here to have fun."
So for another two decades they've been doing what the band started out doing in 1970 at its first $15 gig at Horse Pens 40: Laughing and making others laugh, working crowds and marveling with every year that passes how they get to stand on so many stages in front of so many people and make them smile.
Brad Ryan, Bobby Horton and Jerry Ryan are Three On a String. In Jerry's basement. (Ian Hoppe)
The trio has been selected to perform at three modern-day vaudeville-themed shows in January to open the renovated Lyric Theatre in Birmingham. Those shows, which will also feature the Birmingham Sunlights and other acts, are almost sold out.
And next year will mark the 45th anniversary of when the band started in earnest, and the summer will feature a Three On a String reunion concert in which old band members and contributors appear onstage.
Because they chose to stay, to keep the comedy skits and the bluegrass standards, the original songs and pop tunes and their joy of playing them.
They aren't superstars, these guys. They're not on endless world tours and they don't trend on Twitter. But if you think they're just three guys sitting around picking and grinning – if you believe the group's playful slogan "Three On a String – Your alternative to good music" – you've got it all wrong.
The guys have played with everybody who's anybody close to their style of music, from Barbara Mandrell to Hank Williams Jr., the Oak Ridge Boys, the Statler Brothers and more. And Horton, 65, has worked with Ken Burns on multiple films, producing and performing scores for 10 of them, including "The Civil War" and "Baseball." He has 1,600 tracks on Burns films, and his credits are remarkable – even if he brushes them aside. He's a music historian, a composer and a multi-instrumentalist who describes 16 films he did for the National Park Service as "some stuff I did."
Brad Ryan, who as the son of founder Jerry Ryan reluctantly came into the band in the '80s, has several albums and many accomplishments of his own. But none can be greater around here than penning the theme to the Rick & Bubba Show (Rick & Bubba in da house!), and teaming with those radio legends on other songs including the incomparable "Tee Tee in the Potty."
And Jerry Ryan – a former basketball coach at Woodlawn and Ensley high schools and Samford University – is the man who has always brought it home, whose humor and hard nose kept things on track.
It has been hard at times, especially early on. The group has played many corporate shows and other private events in which audience members didn't know exactly what they were going to get.
Old Coach Jerry Ryan never gave up the game planning. (Ian Hoppe)
That has been their blessing and their curse.
"Nobody knows who the hell we are," Jerry Ryan says of some shows. "They don't know if it's chamber music, or strippers or what. When we finally get their attention and they give us a standup. What could be better?"
He realized early in the days of Three On a String that was what mattered. And – like the coach he was – he developed a strategy that has lasted the decades.
"It's just like making a game plan," he said. "The first play we run is this song right here, just like calling plays. If they didn't like it go in a different direction. We call audibles at the line."
He is describing this just like an old coach in the basement of his Huffman home, where the band has long practiced. As he talks about it Horton yells "Red 24" like a quarterback at the line. But they are both serious about it.
There can be no dead time during a performance, no break in the action. If a string breaks you call an audible to launch into a poem. If the audience fails to respond to one type of song, you surprise them with something else. But no talking amongst themselves. Ever. No waiting.
"Don't get a delay of game penalty," the old coach says.
"They didn't pay to see us tune our instruments," Horton adds. "Thank goodness we had a place to learn. We've had this whole time to get the feel of doing a show."
Thank goodness they've had this whole time. This whole 45 years, laughing and playing together, winning new audiences and pleasing old ones. And planning to do it some more because it is fun.
"We're going to ride this horse as long as it will carry us," Horton said.
The brass ring? These guys didn't have to grab it, because they forged one for themselves. Right here in Birmingham.