EDGAR LANE....MANDOLIN..GUITAR...VOCALS
I grew up in beautiful downtown Hertford, N.C. I started playing guitar when I was nine. My first band was The Mustangs in the eighth grade. After graduating East Carolina University in 1983 I moved to Norfolk, Va. and played in a rock band called EKG. We gigged and split up back and forth for several years. Around 1985 I joined The Blues Defenders. We gigged quite a bit around Hampton Roads and up and down the Eastern Seaboard. We placed third nationally in a Blues Competition for Malaco Records in Memphis, TN in 1987. Marty Jones (currently with Marty Jones and the Pork Boilin' Poor Boys) and I wrote several songs for our album I Heard That. Towards the end of my tenure with The Blues Defenders I was playing with the Abingdon All Stars, The Jailtones and The Blues Defenders on any given night. All three of the bands did several of the same songs, all with different arrangements and in different keys. That was interesting! During the late eighties and early nineties, Nick Bonus from The Jailtones and I had a duo that played regularly called Mondo Duo. We played for Ted Nugent while he ate a steak at the Coach House Inn on Colley Avenue in Norfolk one night.

In 1990 we moved back to Carolina and I put 200,000 miles on the old Ford Ranger commuting to Virginia to gig. The early morning trips down the Dismal Swamp Canal Bank got old after three years so I formed Eddie Lee and the Bulldozers with David Ziemba and Jason Hurdle. We did a few gigs and called it quits when I opened Crossroads Music in Elizabeth City in '94. I took a hiatus from playing music until I came across the guys in Out 'n the Cold around 1997. I was learning to play the mandolin and they didn't have a mandolin player, so I joined and have been with them ever since. I also play with Tommy Hartley in Slowhand-A Tribute To Eric Clapton

In my spare time, you can find me at Crossroads Audio Video & Communications in Hertford NC. Come by and say hello—or better yet, come and see Out 'n the Cold LIVE!!..EDGAR

KENT LUTON....VOCALS
Been singing since I can remember. Not much else to do on a tractor in a field in the middle of a Weeksville. My Daddy always sung, so I guess I inherited it from him.

I’ve sang in all sorts of community theater productions, and with a barber shop quartet for a couple of years. If any of you ever came to an NC State performance in the late 70’s, given by the chorus group, you’ve already heard me. I was in the tenor section -— you remember now?

Started singing with ONTC after college, but after a while, I began feeling that I wasn’t pulling my fair share as "just a singer", so I picked up the mandolin. I learned a couple of chords and brought it to a few gigs, but then the fellows started hiding it and asking me to leave it home. Next, I appointed myself the "percussion section" and I designed and made a combination scrub board. I hinged two together; one had the regular metal washboard, while the other had a glass washboard (very rare). This instrument was truly "one of a kind". One night at the Soundside Restaurant, on the Outer Banks, someone relieved me of it. If you see this instrument, there is a big reward for its safe return.

Now alas, I’m "just a singer" again...KENT

"RED" SWAIN....BANJO(OH MY GOSH!!!)...VOCALS
I started playing guitar when I was in junior high; played in a couple of high school rock and roll bands. After I got a little older, I realized that the guitar was not nearly annoying enough to my fellow musicians, so I made a life changing decision.

In the middle 1970’s, I started taking banjo lessons from the late, great Claymon Sawyer, and I’ve been pickin’ ever since. I’ve even developed a skill that Edgar called "noodle-ing". It’s an unconscious, mindless habit of picking the banjo whenever I have it in my hands. It’s kinda like the banjo’s still running (in idle), whenever someone is trying to talk or discuss anything. It’s constant background music and I can’t control it; but best of all, it drives the other guys CRAZY!

The band does not play on Friday nights because of me. I’m the chief, cook, bottle washer, owner, and maintenance man at the 3/8 mile dirt track, Dixieland Speedway in Elizabeth City, and we run every Friday night.... Hey, it’s a living. ....

Come by some Friday night and DO IT IN THE DIRT!!."RED"

DICKIE SANDERS...GUITAR....VOCALS

My daddy played guitar and sang, so I’ve been around folks playing music ever since I can remember.

About everybody in the band started singing and playing back in their early teens, or maybe even before that.

Playing music has given me opportunities to experience slices of life that I otherwise won’t have. It has introduced me to a wide variety of people of all backgrounds and has started lifelong friendships. (Heck, I even met my wife when I was playing in a club in Elizabeth City)

I really enjoy performing and playing music, but the friendship thing is much more important to me. The guys in this band are all really close friends (three of us have been together for nearly 30 years). This band is like a family; dysfunctional maybe, but a family nonetheless.

We have a great deal of respect for one another and appreciate the talent each one brings the band. If you go to one of our shows, sometime during the night you’ll most likely see us ‘high five’ one of our fellow band mates after a song when he’s laid down a super lick or we nail a three or four part harmony vocal arrangement that’ll give you goose bumps. I tell everybody that I've got the best seat in the house. We’re having a ball up there on stage, we only hope the audience is too.

I know bands that play great music together on stage, but off stage, they hardly speak to one another; it’s purely a business partnership to them. It’s not like that with Out ’n the Cold-- if we didn’t like each other, we wouldn’t play together; simple as that.

Now I’m not saying we agree all the time or that we’re not opinionated; shoot, you get five egos together, you're gonna have about seven different opinions on any given subject.

Years ago, we all agreed that when it got to the point when playing wasn’t fun anymore, we’d quit. Well, so far, we really don’t see any reason to quit ‘cause we’re still having fun. And thanks to "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou",and because bluegrass instruments are more prominent in popular country music, our style of music and instrumentation has been rejuvenated and is more popular than ever. I guess if you play something long enough, the trend will come back around to you. Grand Daddy always said, "Don’t throw away your wide ties, they’ll come back in style one day." ...DICKIE

MARTIN PARKER.......DRUMS....PERCUSSION...PRODUCER
Originally from Edenton , N.C., I spent most of my professional music career in Nashville, T.N. I played in garage bands with "Moon" in high school and other local musicians. Hearing the call, I headed out to Nashville in the early 70's to make it in the music scene.Well as luck would have it, I ended up performing with such great artists as Ricky Scaggs, Vince Gill, Earl Scruggs, Patti Loveless and Allison Krause to name a few. Now, this band of merry musicians has become my mainstream act for the present time in my life. I hope it continues because my son told me recently, in so many words,"Dad, this is the only band you have played with that I like"... Well, I guess there is something to be said for that. If you get an inkling of a chance to see this show, don't pass it up..You will be glad you did... Rock and Roll!...FFM