Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley
This is what you get when a Dobro Player of the Year and a guitar prodigy form a duo.
Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley are an "acoustic firestorm," according to Vintage Guitar. Writing about the duo without gushing is difficult; most reviewers haven't tried.
Ickes has earned the International Bluegrass Music Association title of Dobro Player of the Year 15 times. From the San Francisco area, he moved to Nashville and found success as a session musician before forming the band Blue Highway with four other Bluegrass musicians in 1994.
Trey Hensley, from east Tennessee, is yet another young artist who started singing in a gospel group when he was six. Shortly after, his parents took him to a Bluegrass Festival, where he heard Charlie Waller and Jimmy Martin. He got a guitar, learned to play, and performed on the Grand Old Opry with Earl Scruggs and Marty Stuart when he was 11. Rob was playing dobro in Scruggs' band and thought Ickes was a "very talented kid."
They met again about 10 years later when Trey moved to Nashville, and Rob suggested they start playing together, so more people would learn about Trey. One year later, they were nominated for a GRAMMY for their album Before the Sun Goes Down. Since then, they have released two other albums, The Country Blues and A Room Full of Blues.
They have performed nationally and internationally and have collaborated with Taj Mahal, Bobby Osborne, and Buddy Miller. The duo covers songs by the Grateful Dead, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Billy Joe Shaver and tosses old blues standards and original music into their act. Still, their affection and respect for roots music comes through in every performance.
