Biography
Doyle Lawson was born in Ford Town, Sullivan County, Tennessee, near Kingsport, the son of Leonard and Minnie Lawson. The Lawson family moved to Sneedville, Tennessee in 1954, around the time that Doyle acted upon his love for music.
Doyle grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. This is where he became inspired by Bill Monroe, the "founding father" of bluegrass, and his band the Blue Grass Boys. His own instrumental piece, "Rosine," is a tribute to Monroe's birthplace and features, among other things, strains from the singer's 1967 instrumental "Kentucky Mandolin."
Doyle became interested in playing the mandolin around the age of eleven so his father borrowed a mandolin from Willis Byrd, a family friend and fellow musician. Doyle taught himself how to play the mandolin by listening to the radio and records, and watching an occasional TV show. His love for music grew and Doyle decided to learn to play the guitar and banjo as well.
Doyle’s perseverance and hard work style has shown through over forty albums since 1977 and through his band’s schedule, which includes over sixty concerts in one year. His hard work and high expectations for his band seem kind of humorous to some with Doyle’s recollection of one practice when he "instructed each member to go to a separate room in the house and continue singing. If the individual members were no longer in pitch when they rejoined their leader, they'd start over again. ‘Of course, they thought I was crazy,’ he told John Wooley in Tulsa World, ‘but I told 'em that if it'd work for the banjo, it'd work for vocals. What it does is, it gets you to do things without being conscious of it, because we all were being programmed the same way.’" Doyle expects a lot from his band and it shows with numerous awards and nine nominations for this year’s International Bluegrass Music Association Awards.
Every year Doyle hosts the Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver Festival in Denton, North Carolina.
He has one son, Robbie,and two daughters Suzi and Kristi. Kristi gave birth to the Lawson’s first grandchild, Spencer, in July 2007.
Doyle rededicated his life to Jesus in May 1985 and is a member of Cold Spring Presbyterian Church.
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