Sam Bush, a legend in the bluegrass community who stretches the genre’s musical boundaries, will take the stage Sept. 24 at Western Carolina University’s Ramsey Regional Activity Center.

Bush burst onto the scene as a 17-year-old fiddling champion, recording his first album, Poor Richard’s Almanac, in 1969 and going on to found the New Grass Revival two years later. The band broke new ground in acoustic music, creating a signature blend of bluegrass flavored with gospel, rock, pop, reggae, jazz, and country.

“Even in NGR we were carefull not to call ourselves bluegrass,” Bush said. “Really its kind of like contemporary music on traditional instruments.”

NGR broke up in 1989 after an 18-year run, and Bush, weary from his years on the road and in the spotlight, thought he would finally be able to take a break from it all.

“If anything, I was hoping to stop traveling,” Bush said.

Cooling his heels wasn’t in the works, as icon Emmylou Harris asked Bush to join her on making a stripped down return to her acoustic, folksy roots. Bush wound up taking the lead with Harris’ Grammy-winning Nash Ramblers for five years.

“It was a great experience because she’s just such a great band leader and a generous person,” Bush said.

Bush grew up playing both the fiddle and mandolin. The time spent with Harris gave Bush a new appreciation for lyricism and vocal melody, and for one important reason he found himself transitioning to a mandolin player first and fiddler second.

“It’s a little easier to sing when I’m playing the mandolin than the fiddle,” he said.

Bush’s love for the mandolin grew out of a childhood spent watching the Grand Ol’ Opry on TV with his parents in Bowling Green, Ohio. The family was rooted in the musical tradition. Bush’s mother played guitar, his father played fiddle and mandolin, his grandfather also played fiddle and a couple of uncles were guitar pickers.

The early musical education bore with it an appreciation for legend Bill Monroe and his trademark “chop” method that Bush now employs on stage.

After leaving the Nash Ramblers, Bush got a request from old NGR bandmate Bela Fleck to join forces with the Flecktones. The result was almost 70 shows in a year’s time, and a resurgence in Bush’s interest in improvisational bluegrass.

In 1996, Bush released a solo album, Glamour and Grits, on Sugar Hill Records, earning critical acclaim. One of his latest recordings, Ice Caps: Peaks of Telluride, is culled from his 1990s performances at Colorado’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival, where he has been the guiding spirit for 26 of the festival’s 27 years, earning Bush the title “Mayor of Telluride.”

Bush is gearing up to enter the studio again, working out songs that are primarily in the experimental stages and trying to find tunes that, while diverse, still go together.

“I like those kinds of records,” he said of multi-influenced albums. “But you do have to be careful they fit in a cohesive manner.”

Bush and his band will headline the 2004 Mountain Heritage Day Spotlight Concert, which also includes Whitewater Bluegrass Company, featuring Western alumnus, and Grammy Award-winning banjoist Marc Pruett, and the Frogtown Four.

Tickets for the show are $10 for Western students and children 13 and under and $15 for all others. Show time is 7:30 p.m. To order tickets, contact the Ramsey Center ticket office at 828.227.7722 or 866.WCU.FEST.