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Once again the Boston Bluegrass Union has put on a great festival with top notch bands on stages, around 50 workshops offering folks chances to learn techniques, histories, and to interact in an intimate setting with great players. They also had the Sunday night dance party, and of course ample spaces for spontaneous bluegrass jammin' [...]
The folks with Boston Bluegrass Union managed to put on another successful Joe Val Festival last weekend, despite the third major snowstorm of 2015 hitting New England right in the middle of it. A few artists weren't able to get in for their scheduled spots, and a few that did weren't able to get out. [...]
From the very beginning playing bluegrass music has been a very precarious job, even for the very, very talented. Bill Monroe worked at Sinclair Oil in the 1930s; Kenny Baker often went back to the coal mines even though he was a mainstay in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys; George Shuffler was more often otherwise [...]
On this day ….. On June 25, 1926, Joe Val was born. Joseph Valiante, shortened to Joe Val by Tex Logan, was a bluegrass music pioneer from New England. Born in Everett, Massachusetts, he was a relative late-comer to country music, starting to play the guitar at the age of 14. His interest in bluegrass [...]
This first-timer's overview of the 2013 Joe Val festival is a contribution from Tara Linhardt, noted mandolinist, instructor, filmmaker and Guinness World Record holder. Tara also took the many photos which accompany this piece. I decided to broaden my horizons and try some new festivals this year, so I headed up north to Framingham, MA [...]
The Boston area’s prime bluegrass event, The Joe Val Bluegrass Festival, is coming up in a few weeks and a lot of folks in the northeast are making preparations to attend. We'll have a correspondent/photographer there for the first time this year (Tara Linhardt), who will capture some of the flavor of the event for [...]
Rounder Records has recently begun a weekly series of remembrances on their official blog from the early days of their 40 years in bluegrass, old time and roots music. They are calling the feature Way Back Wednesday, and post a new one each Wednesday (or thereabouts) from one of the three founders of the company [...]
