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The Old Tone Roots Music Festival in North Hillsdale, New York just had its first three day festival this last weekend. Old Tone is definitely in my picks for best festivals of the region for sure. It is set in the beautiful and pastoral Taconic mountains on a working farm with Scottish highland cattle surrounding [...]
Friday of Grey Fox 2016 was jam packed full of a wide variety of traditional and progressive bluegrass and related musics, legends, and new faces and sounds. Whether one wanted to see names that they had known and followed for years or be exposed to new music and people, plenty of options abounded all day [...]
The horrors! Slobbering five-stringers have been invited to drool all over the proceedings at this year's Monroe Mandolin Camp in Nashville. But seriously, after mando purists pick themselves up off the floor, they'll recognize what camp managers Mike Compton and Heidi Herzog have to say about the change. To wit, that Bill Monroe himself loved the banjo [...]
Pegged Nation has announced that Monroe-style mandolin master Mike Compton has joined their staff of instructors, and will soon be introducing a new video course for the California-based e-learning outfit. The company was launched just over a year ago to provide high level instruction for students of bluegrass, old-time, and Americana music on stringed instruments. [...]
Roe Entertainment in Maryville, TN has announced the addition of Nashville supergroup Helen Highwater Stringband to their roster of talent. All booking representation for the group will now he handled by Roe. The band consists of four close friends with long associations in bluegrass who decided about two years ago to start doing some shows [...]
The International Bluegrass Music Museum will continue to host its annual mandolin camp at IBMM headquarters in Owensboro, KY under the direction of Mike Compton. Some confusion has arisen owing to Mike moving his Bill Monroe mandolin camp to Nashville, which had previously been held at the museum each Fall. Compton looked for a new home [...]
With the International Bluegrass Music Museum’s decision to broaden the scope of their mandolin camp rather than continue to specialize in the Monroe style, master mandolin player Mike Compton has decided to set up a camp to fill the void. The first of these new dedicated Monroe Mandolin Camp takes place September 4-7 at Camp Marymount in Dickson [...]
Would you like to own a signed show poster from the Soggy Bottom Boys' recent live show in Gatlinburg, TN? As we mentioned in an earlier post, the guys signed a limited number of these when they performed in March at the Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery. One of only five in existence, the poster is autographed by Dan Tyminski, [...]
This report and photos are a contribution from Jessica Boggs, a librarian and serious bluegrass fan in East Tennessee. For fans of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? – or simply fans of great traditional bluegrass music – Gatlinburg’s Ole Smoky Holler, home of the Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine Distillery, was the place to [...]
There has been a good deal of excitement this past few weeks about the first-ever live performance of The Soggy Bottom Boys, the studio band that recorded Man Of Constant Sorrow for the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou in 2000. Dan Tyminski, Barry Bales, Ron Block, Stuart Duncan and Mike Compton will reunite for [...]
