Back in 1999, the dynamic family band known as Cherryholmes didn’t exist, and half of its youthful members hadn’t even picked up instruments yet. In five short years, this high-energy Nashville-based act made history with nominations for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Emerging Artist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year awards. Never before has any one act received nominations in both categories in the same year, and Cherryholmes came home with the coveted 2005 Entertainer of the Year title.

Their self-titled fourth album, Cherryholmes, was released on Skaggs Family Records September 27, 2005, and features the exciting vocal harmonies and hard-driving virtuosity that has made Cherryholmes a favorite of audiences everywhere they play. The album, produced by Ben Isaacs, contains nine original songs written by various band members, as well as some carefully chosen classics, including a cover of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Workin’ Man (Nowhere to Go)” and an a cappella reading of the Louvin Brothers’ gem, “Who Will Sing for Me?” that the family performed at the funeral of the legendary Jimmy Martin, who was one of their early champions.

The Cherryholmes family has several qualities that make them unique, but the basis of their success lies in plain, old-fashioned hard work combined with shining star talent that only appears to glow more brightly with each performance. They embody the American bluegrass dream.

Jere and Sandy Cherryholmes met in their church, married, and began raising a family of six children in Bell, Calif., just outside of Los Angeles. Jere was a carpenter for the L.A. County school system, and Sandy home-schooled the children. Surprisingly enough, the idea for this exuberant group of musicians was inspired by tragedy. In 1999, their oldest daughter, Shelly, died at age 20 in her sleep from respiratory failure, due to chronic heart problems. The family heard about a nearby bluegrass festival and decided to go, to lift their spirits.

“We saw Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys and it changed our entire lives, going to that bluegrass festival and spending that day with them,” Sandy recalls. On the way home, Jere said, ‘You know, what we really need right now is to do something special with our kids. Let’s start a bluegrass group.’ We decided who would play what and I started giving them music lessons.”

Cia (21, on banjo), B.J. (17, on fiddle), Skip (16, on guitar), and Molly (13, on fiddle) were assigned instruments. “Well, if you asked them, they would have all picked drums,” Sandy laughs. “Cia was playing guitar in church and singing, the little kids weren’t playing anything, and I was a piano player. So I decided that I would play whatever was left, and so would Jere. That left him with the bass and me with the mandolin. 

“When the younger ones were just starting, they couldn’t play much so we orchestrated the music so that no one could tell,” Sandy explains. “I divided the parts up and they only played one note each – so it sounded like double stops. Then I played the mandolin with them, and they played on pitch. We taught Skip to play a few banjo licks on the mandolin, and then we just played really loud and fast,” she laughs. “Within four months we started getting invitations from people wanting us to come and play.”

By year’s end, the family took a gig on Saturdays in the San Bernardino Mountains. “We started the dancing out of a desperate need for songs,” Sandy confides. “We only had about 15 songs and we had to play for six hours! I had been teaching them Irish stepdancing in their P.E. classes anyway, so we put together some dance routines.”

What started out as a desire to use music to draw the family closer together during their time of sorrow, developed into a part-time band. Cherryholmes won a few local contests, and the promoters kept calling as their skills improved and their reputation spread.

After a 32-hour round trip to play a show in Colorado, Jere realized they had reached their weekend driving limit. “People advised us that if we were going to do this with our kids, we needed to do it while they were young,” he said. “So we talked about it and prayed about it, and decided that we were going to sell the house and I would quit my job and we would just go – and whatever happened, happened. I left my job in July of 2002.”

At first they traveled in a car, pitching a tent to sleep in. Next they graduated to a van with some camping equipment, then to a 26-foot trailer, and then to a classic, mint-condition GM bus. Their current “home on wheels” is a 45-foot Prevost bus.

All six band members sing lead, so the trio variations are endless in a Cherryholmes set. Arrangements include split breaks, twin fiddles, key changes, and Irish stepdancing with Sandy’s old-time clawhammer tunes. She actually choreographs each song with diagrams that resemble football plays.

“The whole concept is that we have high-powered instrumentals that are at warp speed,” Jere says. “We’ve got bluegrass; we’ve got traditional stuff from the Stanleys and Monroe. The kids are writing their own songs now. We try to take the audience on a roller coaster ride, on purpose. We want them to experience highs and lows, and speed and excitement.”

In 2003, Cherryholmes made their first appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree, the CMA Music Fest and IBMA’s Bluegrass Fan Fest. In mid-October 2004, the band kicked off their own festival, the “Best in Tradition With Cherryholmes,” at Hoofer’s Gospel Barn in LaGrange, Ga. “A lot of the energy when we play comes from the hard work and the long hours on the road when you’re tired. But then you get onstage and for all six of us, it almost blows up – in a positive way. I think that has a lot to do with why we’re so driven and why we can do so much,” Sandy explains.