Rockingham Road

Ed Bowman's Biography

Edward Bowman was born in Johnson City on August 17th, 1943. He has lived in the Boones Creek area all his life except for a two-year period spent in the army (1966 through 1968). He was educated first at Boones Creek and later at East Tennessee State University. After 28 years in the reserves, he retired from the army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Many people still recognize Ed at our shows because of his years as a mathematics teacher.  He retired from the Johnson City school system after teaching for 30 years. Edward still lives on and farms the land where he was raised. He currently raises beef cattle and sheep.

Edward's interest in bluegrass started at the Boones Creek Christian Church.  A group of youngsters wanted to learn to play bluegrass and their teacher, Vicki Shell, encouraged Edward to learn to play a bass because none of the children were big enough to handle one. He bought a bass and started to play some, then decided to take lessons from John Fleenor who now plays dobro for Rockingham Road.  On John’s encouragement, Ed joined the Bluegrass program at ETSU.  He played in the program for 2 years and during his last semester here, he played with 3 of the members of the band that turned out to become Rockingham Road.

He has a lot of fun playing with the band even though he has very little musical knowledge. It is a great group of people to be associated with.

For information and/or bookings, call Jim Hunter at (423) 928-7914
or email at hunterjr@chartertn.net.