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The International Bluegrass Music Association and the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau have released some numbers from last month's World of Bluegrass week in Raleigh, NC. They show strong participation by both locals and visitors to the area, with an estimated economic impact of $11.5 million from out-of-towners alone. IBMA reports a total of 1449 attendees in 2016, [...]
Kentucky's Hammertowne has announced the departure of banjo player Brent Pack, and the addition of new member David Adams Barnett in his stead. According to guitarist Dave Carroll, Brent has been offered a position as a full time Park Ranger with the Kentucky State Park Department, an opportunity that comes up quite rarely. Pack couldn't think of turning it [...]
Geoff Union, guitarist and fearless leader of Colorado's Ragged Union, offers this report from their current tour of Great Britain. We’ve made it to roughly the halfway point of our 2 week tour - here’s a little update on how things are going: The British audiences are amazingly enthusiastic about bluegrass music. We’ve had great [...]
Mountain Fever Records has released a sampler video to introduce Heidi & Ryan, formerly known as Kentucky Mountain Trio. It features the music of Heidi and Ryan Greer, a Kentucky couple whose heartfelt vocals and sincere songs will capture your imagination. Recorded and produced by Aaron Ramsey at Mountain Fever, these two singing sweethearts have created [...]
Is this bluegrass? Most assuredly not, but fans of the five string banjo should enjoy this interesting use of the instrument. Virginia banjoist John Bullard has just released his most recent album, Classical Banjo: The Perfect Southern Art, where he performs popular music from the Baroque, Romantic, and Classical periods. Unlike his previous efforts, which primarily [...]
On Saturday, October 22, Northgate Gallery in Brentwood, TN will host a living estate sale for the collected property of Tom T. and Dixie Hall. Since Miss Dixie's passing in 2015, Tom T. has been downsizing and simplifying his life, and is parting with most of the furnishings with which Dixie so lovingly decorated their home over the [...]
Here is a report from C.J. Lewandowski from the opening leg of the Po' Ramblin' Boys ongoing 2016 European tour. Full tour details, including newly-added dates, can be found online. Planning a three week tour for a band is tough sometimes, we all know that. Planning a three week tour for a U.S. band traveling [...]
Can any song be turned into a bluegrass number? And furthermore, should it? Those are the questions I found myself asking as I listened to Dwight Yoakam’s new album, with the tongue-in-cheek title, Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars.... Yoakam lined up a backing band full of bluegrass music’s top talent and (unlike several other nineties country stars [...]
Family Music Group has released a single from their latest album for South Carolina's The King James Boys, The Little End of Something Big. The single is a spirited Gospel number called Long Enough. The Boys are Randy Spencer on guitar, Cole Spencer on bass, Jesse Owens on banjo, Jacob Jackson on mandolin, and Jeff Dover on vocals. They've prepared [...]
Right on cue, Mountain Fever Records has a single release for Sideline's next album, Colors & Crossroads. The cover has a fall theme, taken from the title track about an October morning in Carolina. But the first single is a song from Tommy Long called You Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone, a driving bluegrass [...]
