Chatham County Line

Americana, Bluegrass

Chatham County Line is a beloved band from Raleigh. For more than two decades the band has played every bar, concert and festival stage in Central North Carolina.

Songwriter Dave Wilson (guitar, vocals), John Teer (mandolin, fiddle) and Greg Readling (bass, pedal steel) make up the core of the band. PineCone audiences will also remember banjo player Chandler Holt. Chandler left the band and moved to Colorado to work as a booking agent. Dan Hall has since joined Chatham County Line on drums and percussion.

Dave Wilson and the band were early advocates for PineCone’s efforts to bring IBMA’s World of Bluegrass to Raleigh. Their song “Living In Raleigh Now” was inspired after the first year that IBMA was in North Carolina. The song is essentially a love song to the music and the band’s hometown. Dave Wilson sings, “There’s no chance we’re going to lose that high lonesome sound… What was born in Kentucky, moved off the Nashville, is living in Raleigh now.”

“I think the spirit of the song captured everything that Raleigh was going for when we tried to recruit IBMA here,” said former PineCone Executive Director William Lewis on WUNC’s Songs We Love Podcast. “We are really proud of our bluegrass heritage and we really knew what our city could do. And so I think that song really does capture it.”

In 2018 Chatham County Line and PineCone worked together to curate a mainstage festival set that featured special guests Bobby Britt (from Town Mountain), Libby Rodenbaugh (from Mipso), Joe Newberry and Mike Compton.

The last time Chatham County Line performed as a part of the festival was during the all-virtual event in 2020. The band chose Raleigh’s Union Station as the setting for their set. During that performance the band swapped out the banjo for a drum kit. “We’ve shifted a little bit into the Americana music world,” said Dave Wilson during the video shoot. “But we still love bluegrass.”