Now in their 35th year, the Tony Award-winning Red Clay Ramblers are a North Carolina string-band whose repertoire reflects their roots in old-time mountain music, as well as country, rock, Dixieland, bluegrass, gospel, and the American musical. In 1993, the Irwin-Shiner-Ramblers hit Fool Moon on Broadway earned the Ramblers their second Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music in a Play, and Fool Moon in Los Angeles set box-office records; Fool Moon went on to run abroad in Vienna and Munich, returned to Broadway for a second success in late 1995, and had a third Broadway run (Brooks Atkinson Theater, Nov. '98-Jan. '99). Fool Moon enjoyed a 5-week run at the Kennedy Center, DC, Feb.-Mar. '99, and received a Special Tony Award, Gershwin Theater, New York, NY, on June 6th, 1999.

The Ramblers' long association with music and theater also includes the original New York productions of Diamond Studs (1975) and Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind (1985). In 1988, the Red Clay Ramblers scored Mr. Shepard's film Far North, and they perform and appear in his second feature, Silent Tongue (Tri-Mark, 1994). The Ramblers have been guests numerous times on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and have appeared nationally with Jay Leno (NBC-TV "Tonight"), Harry Smith (CBS-TV "This Morning") and Candice Bergen (ABC-TV "AM-America"). They have toured extensively in North America and in Europe, and have made four USIA concert tours, to eastern Europe, sub-Sahara Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. The Ramblers developed Kudzu: A Southern Musical, in collaboration with Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, and staged the show at Duke in Durham, NC (Feb. '98) and Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC (Mar.-June '98).

Over the years, the Ramblers have performed with such figures as '98 Grammy-winner Shawn Colvin (a Red Clay Rambler for most of '87), Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Eugene Chadbourn, Ireland's Boys of the Lough, Randy Newman (recorded "Ride, Gambler, Ride" with him for the film Maverick), and Michelle Shocked (who brought the Eagles' Bernie Leadon and a mobile studio to North Carolina to record with the Ramblers). All along, members of the Ramblers have been involved separately in diverse creative projects, including children's works for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, the celebratory Carolina musicals King Mackerel, Cool Spring, and Tar Heel Voices, as well as scoring for The Discovery Channel and for such independent films as John Sayles' The Secret of Roan Innish and Nick Searcy's Paradise Falls [Best Feature, Hollywood Film Festival, Aug. '98].

Continuing their long relationship to the theater, the Ramblers' show Fool Moon ran at the Geary Theater, San Francisco (July-August '01) and their musical Lone Star Love: the Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas ran at the Ohio Theater, Cleveland, (October-November '01)and in New York, Off-Broadway in 2004 and 2005. The band has composed and performed scores for two ballets, Ramblin' Suite with the Atlanta Ballet in 2003 and Carolina Jamboree with the North Carolina Ballet in 2004 and 2008.

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