Wade & Julia Mainer

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A country music pioneer, Wade Mainer is credited with inventing the two-finger banjo picking style that paved the way for the bluegrass music era. He is known as the “Grandfather of Bluegrass” and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship. Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, and Bill Monroe all cited Mainer as an influence. Mainer transitioned from being a member of his brother’s band in the 1930s to the founder of his own ensemble, the Songs of the Mountaineers, over the course of a career that lasted almost six decades and saw him recording for RCA, King, Montgomery Ward, and Bluebird.