After a nice two-week vacation with family over the holidays, the members of Special Consensus find themselves now in Ireland preparing to start something of a whirlwind tour of the British Isles. Founder and banjo player Greg Cahill tells us that this
Wood & Wire, a dynamic young string band from Austin, TX, is set to release their second album, The Coast, in February. The group consists of Tony Kamel on guitar, Dom Fisher on bass, Trevor Smith on banjo, and Billy Bright on
Tim O'Brien has a new single, and a new distribution system for releasing his music. With his 2015 dedicated to Hot Rize, the bluegrass vehicle which first brought Tim and his music to prominence 30 years ago, he wanted a way
In 2013, a new band showed up on many folks' radar, consisting of some of our music's top pickers. Billed as Sideline (due to the band being a secondary project to all of the members' primary music obligations) Sideline has
Shannon & Heather Slaughter have released a debut single from their upcoming album, Never Just A Song. It's their version of the familiar mountain ballad, Moonshiner, but with a bluesy, pentatonic twist. Shannon says they heard it this way on a record
Patuxent Music has released an absolutely classic set of recordings from Red Allen and Frank Wakefield. The WDON Recordings contain 22 tracks cut in 1963 when Red and Frank had a recurring radio program at WDON AM in Wheaton, MD. This was
Jazz and progressive 5 string banjo player Ryan Cavanaugh has announced his exit from Bill Evans Soulgrass, a hybrid effort by noted sax man Evans to blend funk, jazz and bluegrass grooves. "After 9 years, over 25 countries, and thousands of
“Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art.” – Ursula Le Guin There are lyrics which transcend the words that are chosen, rising above the
Though the band is no more, Dixie Bee-Liners have released a final project, one they were in the process of recording when the band broke up in 2011. At the time, they thought of the break more as a hiatus,
Billboard, who publishes the (supposedly) quintessential music charts, have released their year-end chart of the Top 25 Bluegrass Albums of 2014. Based solely on Nielsen SoundScan sales numbers, the Billboard bluegrass charts can sometimes be a misrepresentation of what is actually
