Ronnie Bowman died Saturday, March 22, from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash in Ashland City, Tennessee. He was 64. He was taken to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, where he did not survive. The bluegrass and country music communities lost one of their most decorated and least famous members. [1]

Bowman won the International Bluegrass Music Association's Male Vocalist of the Year award three times — a distinction that made him royalty within bluegrass and anonymous outside it. His solo records drew comparisons to Alison Krauss for their production quality and musicianship. He sang with the Lonesome River Band and IIIrd Tyme Out. He was, by every account from Nashville, one of the finest pure voices the genre ever produced.

But it was his songwriting that crossed into the mainstream. Bowman co-wrote "Nobody to Blame" with Chris Stapleton and Barry Bales. The song appeared on Stapleton's Traveller album and won the Academy of Country Music's Song of the Year in 2016. He also co-wrote "Outlaw State of Mind" for the same record. For Kenny Chesney, he wrote "Never Wanted Nothing More." The hits paid the bills. The bluegrass was the work he loved. [2]

Alison Krauss posted a tribute Saturday evening. "He was a joy to know," she wrote, a sentence that multiple Nashville musicians echoed in their own words throughout the day. The tributes followed a pattern — each one noted his voice first, his songwriting second, and his character third, which tells you something about how he was regarded by people who make music for a living.

Bowman was born July 9, 1961, in Waynesville, North Carolina. He spent four decades making music that sounded like the mountains he came from. The motorcycle crash took him at 64, which is too young for anyone and especially for a man whose voice had not aged a day.

-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo