Author: John Curtis Goad

I’m usually excited to see new groupings of my favorite musicians, if just for the chance to hear what artists who normally don’t play together sound like when they do. The Rice-Menzone Alliance, a new duo from Mountain Fever’s ever-growing

Ted Olson, a professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, has become known as a go-to person for information on the early recorded music of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia. Some music fans may recognize his name as

The Dappled Grays, an Atlanta-based band that has been together for just over sixteen years, is the kind of group that doesn’t let stylistic boundaries confine them. They call themselves a bluegrass band, and they are a bluegrass band –

The debut album from the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, Back to the Mountains, is music for people like my dad. Old school bluegrass fans, who grew up on Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanleys, who believe that Bill Monroe set the

A new release from The Boxcars is, for many bluegrass fans, a time to celebrate. The group is one of the most talented collections of artists currently on the bluegrass circuit, and they generally release extremely tasteful albums with well-rounded

These days you never really know what a band is going to sound like when you hear them live, although you can usually bet they’re not going to sound exactly like the track you heard on your favorite bluegrass radio

When I see young children hailed as musical prodigies in the bluegrass world, I usually wonder if their early technical skill will translate into a true superstar career, with not just the knowledge to arrange notes in a complicated manner,

As a follow-up to 2014’s well-received Dancin’ Annie, Bill Emerson & Sweet Dixie has released a compilation album of the group’s favorite Gospel tracks from their previous albums. The Gospel Side of Bill Emerson & Sweet Dixie pulls from the

It’s always interesting to see what will happen when new members enter a longstanding band that has previously had a relatively static lineup. Will they pick someone who sounds and plays just like the former member? Will they go in

Though western North Carolina has long been known as a hotbed of traditional music, much of the attention has focused on the old-time, mountain styles – ballad singers, string bands, and the like – found throughout the region’s hills and