Country Singer Brian Duckworth Dies at 56: Remembered for the Gospel Harmonies That Started It All

Brian "Nashville" Neil Duckworth, longtime singer for the West Virginia family country group Taylor Made, has died at 56.

Duckworth passed away at his home in Clarksburg, West Virginia, on Monday, September 7, according to an obituary posted by Bartlett Funeral Home and Crematory. No cause of death has been publicly disclosed.

Long before Taylor Made ever took a stage, Duckworth and his siblings Greg and Wendy were singing together on their family's back porch in Taylor County, West Virginia, with neighbors calling out requests for the trio to perform. That kind of front-porch harmony singing runs deep in Appalachian tradition, tracing its roots back to gospel hymns sung in small country churches - a quiet thread of faith woven into the region's music long before radio ever picked it up.

The siblings turned those harmonies into a career, charting with "Good Love" and "Things You Don't Grow Out Of," and earning MusicRow's Independent Artist of the Year honor in 2012. Taylor Made went on to share stages with Sugarland, Randy Travis and Charlie Daniels, with their last performance together coming in 2025 at a family wedding.

Away from music, Duckworth worked as a dump truck driver for Wolfe's Excavating, a job his obituary says he loved for the time it gave him outdoors.

His niece, singer-songwriter Brianna Duckworth Kazner, wrote in tribute that whenever she got creatively "stuck," her uncle was the one she called - adding, "He truly had such a way with song lyrics."

Duckworth is survived by his wife, Tina, six children, four grandchildren, and several siblings.