Reviews

Ohio-based band Nightflyer has named their second album Rail River & Road – a fitting name that neatly sums up the themes of the majority of the thirteen songs within. They sample from a number of popular bluegrass songwriters here,

The last we heard from Grandpa's Cough Medicine was with their 2012 album, The Murder Chord. It's title track suggested that a heavy metal chord existed that could induce suburban teens to knock off their parents. They take a similarly irreverent,

Despite the textual paradox, 15 year old Victor Furtado is indeed a master of old time, or clawhammer banjo. He has the various trophies from instrumental competitions within reach of his northern Virginia home to prove it. And if you may infer

I have to declare upfront that I had a peek at an early draft of this book. Also, over the years (from about 1981), I have watched Reid gather together the building materials that have gone towards the writing of The Music

Blue Mafia really caught my attention with their 2013 debut CD, My Cold Heart. It boasted of three strong lead singers, and a powerful new songwriting voice, plus the sort of dynamic guitar playing that sets the tracks on fire. Over the

In debates surrounding regional chauvinism in the roots of bluegrass music, New York's Gibson Brothers are often posited as modern exemplars of a sound that isn't dominated by cultural and musical conventions of the American south. It's true that their music is

Largely thanks to cheerful love songs like Corn, Lonely Ends Where Love Begins, and That’s Just Me Loving You, husband and wife duo Darin and Brooke Aldridge have become known as the “Sweethearts of Bluegrass.” While there are a few

One of my biggest gripes as a lover of bluegrass music is to hear terrific picking and singing on a CD, only to hear that the band in question can't replicate that sound – or even come close – on

The Carter Family is almost ubiquitous in every variety of traditional music – and even some more mainstream genres. It's difficult to find a bluegrass, folk, or old-time musician who hasn't recorded a song the Carters made famous, and artists

I suppose I should admit to a bias right up front. Billy Hurt, Jr. is a good friend of mine, and one of my favorite fiddlers in all of bluegrass and old time music. We've played a lot of music