Lindley Creek exports Ozarks bluegrass to the nation
Music has always been a foundation for the Greer family. The three kids would sing along to country music on the radio while their dad, John Rob, drove around Dallas County. “One day our youngest son, Jase, came down the hall singing a line from a song that wasn’t appropriate for a 6-year-old,” John Rob recalls. “So he got in trouble and that afternoon I was driving and found myself singing the exact same lyric. I figured we had a problem.”
John Rob and his wife, Kathie, discovered bluegrass music and decided they would give it a shot as a family with their children, Katie, Jase and Tate.
“We had a banjo under the bed that was probably 20 years old and we bought the cheapest fiddle we could find on eBay,” John Rob says.
The Greers, collectively known on stage as Lindley Creek, have been playing for nearly two decades. They are regulars at Silver Dollar City and travel the country playing shows and music festivals. They’ve released a pair of albums with their first spending two years in the Top 20 of bluegrass charts.
When they bought that first fiddle and set out to teach themselves bluegrass music, none of the Greers, members of Southwest Electric Cooperative, had any experience. Katie — who sings lead vocals — was just 4 years old. “We all have been playing for the exact same amount of time so we all have the same amount of information; we were just younger when we started,” the lead vocalist says. “Some of my earliest memories are all of us just sitting around the living room playing music as a family.”
Once the bluegrass bug bit the Greers, their music snowballed into much more than just something to pass the time. Living room jam sessions turned into performances at their grandparents’ home. Soon they were playing at church. Next came gigs at community events.
After a few years of learning while balancing music with work, John Rob and Kathie both left their jobs. “My last year working full time we played 85 shows,” John Rob says. “Our oldest son was 16 and we thought the world is giving us this opportunity to step away from this job for a while and do this as a family. We were thinking three to five years would be a good run and the kids would move on. That was 14 years ago.”
They chose the name Lindley Creek after the creek near Pomme de Terre Lake where John Rob and his brother would catch frogs, crawdads and tadpoles as kids. Now a full-time band, Lindley Creek’s notoriety grew. They teamed up with Grammy-winning artist, producer and fiddler Jim Van Cleave from Nashville to create their first album.
Jase says this was a seminal undertaking for the family. “A big part of doing that album was discovering what kind of sound Lindley Creek would have moving forward,” the fiddler says. “It was a long process of writing and picking out songs to find that sound. Then going to the studio and realizing we had to go a different direction.”
The album was a struggle at times as they were creating it over the course of a couple years without a label. The family questioned if all the time and money they invested would pay off.
“We kind of got to the point of saying, ‘Are we crazy?’ ” Kathie says. “It was costing a lot and we all knew it sounded good, but we just didn’t know if anyone would ever get to hear it.”
Just as COVID-19 was shutting down nearly everything in early 2020, they released “Freedom, Love and the Open Road” and signed with a label. The album began to pick up in popularity with much of the country stuck at home at the time.
John was working outside their Buffalo home one day when he heard his wife screaming from inside the house. He soon found out they were screams of joy. “I got a text from our producer, Jim, asking if I had seen the bluegrass charts,” Kathie says. “I hadn’t, but he’s in a band that regularly charts so I figured he was just telling us about that. Our single debuted at No. 2.”
The whole family felt relief from the pressures of making the album and not knowing when they could perform live shows again. “I think we all went from scared to shocked to absolutely thrilled,” Katie says.
The band is truly a family affair. Jase’s wife, Caroline, and Katie’s husband, Nate, joined the band in different aspects once they were married. Tate went on to pursue a different career, but still occasionally makes an appearance on stage. The whole family handles nearly every aspect of the band from selling merchandise to shooting music videos to social media to driving the tour bus. In July, they released their second album, “Whispers in the Wind,” which was again produced by Jim.
In southwest Missouri, Lindley Creek can be found inside the front gazebo at Silver Dollar City greeting guests as they enter the park. “Silver Dollar City has been good to us, especially after the COVID shutdown,” Kathie says. “These shows let us get any stage fright worked out and get our show tighter.”
Away from home, the band can be found performing throughout the East Coast and Midwest. In the winter, they travel to Texas to entertain snowbirds. The family agrees the community that comes together at their shows — from small, intimate settings to large music festivals — is what keeps them going.
“You know practicing isn’t always fun. Driving for hours across the country isn’t always fun. Setting up sound is very seldom fun,” Jase says. “But there are very few things that I’ve ever done that are as fun as playing a show to an enthusiastic audience. It’s such a big payoff on all that work we’ve done and great return on our investment.”
For more information, call 417-326-9616, visit lindleycreek.com, or email kathie@lindleycreek.com.