NORTHAMPTON – Six-time Grammy nominee Peter Rowan is a national treasure. A member of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys from 1965 to 1967, the Wayland-born oldest of three brothers has continued to expand the hill country’s musical tradition with brilliant songwriting, earth-shaking tenor vocals, and plaintive yodeling.     

His 1970’s bands, Old & in the Way, with David Grisman, Vassar Clements, and the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, and Muleskinner, with Clarence White and ex-Bluegrass Boys Richard Greene and Bill Keith, spread bluegrass to a wider, contemporary following and set the foundation for the progressive bluegrass bands of today. Releasing albums at a prolific rate, he’s continued to lift the bar further each time.

On Feb. 27, Rowan will be participating in a Back Porch Bluegrass concert at the Academy of Music in Northampton along with North Carolina duo Mandolin Orange and the Steep Canyon Ramblers (the Grammy-winning band with whom comic/banjo player Steve Martin has recorded). The concert is part of a weekend-long series of shows hosted by Signature Sounds’ Jim Olson.

Bluegrass is only one hue in Rowan’s palette. Rock and roll, reggae, country music, and folk balladry are as much a part of his musical voice. Along with Grisman, he was a member of late-60s Boston-based psychedelic-rock band Earth Opera and he joined with Greene and Blues Project exiles Andy Kulberg and Roy Blumenfeld in the roots-fusion Seatrain.

With his brothers Chris and Loren, he recorded pop-rock albums as the Rowans. He’s also recorded with dobro wiz Jerry Douglas, guitarists Tony Rice and Jim Rooney, fiddler Richard Greene, banjoist Bill Keith, Norte?o accordionist Flaco Jimenez, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, Northern Lights, Steve Earle, and Czech bluegrass band Druha Trava, along with his Free Mexican Air Force, Crucial Country, and Twang an’ Groove.  

“The key to my flexibility,” Rowan explained, “and my appreciation of the music world, is that I’ve always allowed the songs to take me where they want to go. If they want to go to Jamaica, I have to go to Jamaica.”

Composed over seven years, Rowan’s most recent release, “Dharma Blues” embraced sounds and spirit of a distant locale. “Lyrically, it was outside of any of the normal expectations,” Rowan said, “and, musically, it had a bluesy drone. The songs wrote themselves when I was traveling through India and Japan. I was living in Nashville but every two years, I would go over to study with Tibetan lamas (high priests).”    

He said of the album, “It makes my heart feel big. You can have all the technique to put forward but, when you feel your heart swell up, that’s the music I like. I like Hawaiian music, Spanish music, and that [high lonesome] bluegrass sound, and then there’s the Dharma Blues level. That music is about the vastness of existence. [It makes] your heart swell and tears come to your eyes.”

The trips abroad provided Rowan opportunity to reflect on his stage persona. “I’m supposed to be ‘Panama Red’,” he said. “That wasn’t something I chose but I’ve shaped myself into a quasi-mythical character from the Southwest. It’s a fun character to portray. It’s influenced my stage manner and the way I approach an audience. John Hartford used to say, ‘You look like you’re trying out for a Hollywood western,’ but it’s an authentic American, Spanish-American, and American Indian part of history. It’s been of interest to me since I was a child. It yielded songs like ‘Midnight Moonlight’ and ‘The Land of the Navajo’.”

Raised on a farm a half-hour west of Boston, Rowan, 73, grew up during a fertile period of music. “It was a fantastic time,” he recalled. “You had Harvard Square with all kinds of beatniks and hip people, good coffee, jazz musicians hanging out playing conga drums in the cafes, and folk musicians playing at Club 47, and then going over to Kenmore Square to the Jazz Workshop. Across the river, on the other end of Mass. Avenue, you had Hillbilly Ranch [where bluegrass reigned]. The first time that I went there, I was 17. Bob French hired me to play mandolin.”

Introduced to the country music side of bluegrass by mandolinist/high-tenor vocalist Joe Val, Rowan “wasn’t playing for a folk audience who was all-ears listening for a pin drop,” he said. “Country audiences like to have a good time... to reach them you have to come from a different place. The pristine performance of a song won’t do it alone. You have to have something that grabs their attention.”

Having cut his teeth with rock bands like the Comets as a teenager, Rowan brought a spirit to his performances that crossed-over to a broad following. “Playing for country audiences after playing with rock bands around Boston,” he said, “I had a perfect opportunity to relate to, not only my generation, but a new generation of fans.”

That relationship continues to this day.