Updated: 04 January 2010

Mickey Stinnett loves bluegrass. “Bluegrass is straightforward. There’re not a lot of smoke and mirrors. You play it and it is pure. I absolutely love the harmonies. The harmonies plus the acoustic instruments are great.” Mickey has plenty of opportunity to play bluegrass. He is a member of the popular Palmer Divide (PD) band. Mickey plays resonator guitar. You can also hear him on guitar and vocals.

Mickey has been a part of the Colorado bluegrass music scene since 1997 when he and wife Jill moved here from Virginia. “We came in the October 1997 blizzard. The weather reports said there was a snowstorm up north so we chose the southern route through the Raton Pass. When we got there the blizzard had turned south and the pass was closed. We were stuck there.” That was Mickey’s introduction to Colorado weather. Fortunately, the reception by Colorado musicians was a lot warmer. “I had written a few people I found on a bluegrass list. Several of them answered and told me about some jams around. The first weekend we were here there was a concert at the old Colorado Opry. There we met Charlie Hall, Tom Mnich, Mike Carr and others. It was good to put faces to the names. After that I met Greg Reed at the Durango Meltdown.”

It didn’t take long for Mickey to get pickin’ here in Colorado. He played with Greg and Benny Galloway in the Boulder-based Cletus Brothers Band and later with Lost Creek. “I got to know Dick Carlson and Hope Grietzer. They and Charlie asked Greg and me to join their group. There was one song I played banjo on. During a festival set once Charlie turned to me and said: ‘don’t get nervous but Bela Fleck is standing over there listening to us.’ I wasn’t nervous at all. I knew Bela was not looking to hire me. I wasn’t auditioning.” Mickey played with Black Rose for three years until it disbanded. Greg and Mickey wanted to keep playing so they hooked up with Jody Adams and Jeff Back to form Palmer Divide. PD plays all original music. “At first it was not the intention to do all original stuff but then we decided to go for it. Jody writes most of the songs. When I write they are instrumentals. Jody wrote the lyrics to my instrumental, Blackjack Joe. It is on our Shenandoah Train CD. We all do arranging. Now that we have a little down time we are writing music for an all-collaborative album we hope to release next.”

Mickey hails from Northern Virginia. He was born and raised in Lynchburg not far from D.C. “Everyone in my family plays. My grandmother and granddad played clawhammer banjo. One Sunday we went to my grandparents after church and my grandmother pulled out a little keyboard someone had given her. She surprised us. I don’t know where she learned that. My Dad plays banjo.” When he goes back to Virginia for a visit Mickey’s Dad usually invites some friends over for a few hours of pickin.’ Mickey got his first guitar at the age of eleven or twelve. His Dad taught him the G, C and D chord and he took it from there. He played in rock bands throughout high school. “We played a lot of shows and even performed before one of the minor league baseball games. I liked rock music and still do. I had a lot of opportunities to hear live groups. My Mom once took me to a KISS concert. We both loved it.”

The harmonies of The Seldom Scene drew Mickey to bluegrass. He was also influenced by Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas and Mike Auldridge. After college Mickey branched out to banjo and then to Dobro playing with various groups. “The transition from guitar to Dobro made sense. Once you get control of the roll and the bar it is not so difficult. You just slide around until it sounds good.” Mickey won first place in Pennsylvania’s Deer Creek Bluegrass Festival Dobro competition when he was playing with the band Flatland Grass. “When I was playing with Flatland Grass the mandolin player moved and we needed a mando player. I couldn’t afford to buy a good mandolin. I got the plans and wood and made one.” Since then he has made over twenty more mandolins.

You may wonder how a Virginia boy got transplanted to Colorado. Mickey met Jill at his first job. When they started thinking of having children they both thought the busy D.C. area was not the place they wanted to do it. “Virginia is pretty crowded. We wanted a more relaxed place to raise kids.” Mickey was working with Mitre Corporation there and moved to the Colorado Springs office. Mickey is in graphic design. When he first came to Colorado he worked part time at Mitre and built instruments part time. “You can’t build them fast enough to make it pay so I went back to Mitre full time. I am not an active luthier now. I built twenty-four mandolins, three Dobros and a couple of guitars.” There is a sense of satisfaction in building instruments. “When you get the top and back plate built you can tap it and hear the wood ring.” That’s when it gets exciting. Once you can hear the sound in the wood you can tweak the voice of the instrument by changing thickness of the wood and size of the f holes.

Mickey and Jill have two boys. Michael, eleven, is into football and skateboarding. Cory, nine, is on the Junior Olympics Gymnastics Team. “They have every instrument known to man available to them but they are not too interested at the moment. They do take guitar at school.”

Mickey plans to go back to instrument building once the kids are grown and he has more time. For now though, songwriting, arranging and playing with Palmer Divide keeps him right in the middle of bluegrass. And that is how he likes it.

Phyllis Stark