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Virginia was a busy place for bluegrass pickers this past weekend. In addition to the Virginia Bluegrass Band Championship in Chesterfield, the first annual Scott Street Five String Finals were held during the Richmond Folk Festival. This new competition is especially for younger banjo players, held in memory of Scott Street, prominent Virginia attorney and banjo player who [...]
Sammy Shelor and Mike Hartgrove of Lonesome River Band were invited to perform at last night's gala honoring Steve Martin with the 43rd American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. They were featured onstage with comedian/actor Martin Short singing the song, Friend Of Mine. While Steve was aware of most of the people set to appear, Sammy and Mike were [...]
We had posted back in January about Bud Bennett, the Appalachian Music Specialist at Radford University's McConnell Library, and his series of videos with banjo legend Butch Robins, who lives near Radford. Butch spoke at length about his life and music, and his time with Bill Monroe. It's a valuable oral history of an important time in bluegrass. Bud [...]
This past Sunday (June 22, 2014), Sammy Shelor performed with the The Zac Brown Band in Bristow, VA. Brown and his eclectic country band have been known to favor bluegrass music and acoustic artists, and his former bass player and current guitarist, John Driskell Hopkins, has a bluegrass album, Daylight, recorded with Balsam Range in [...]
Stop me if you've heard this one before... A pianist and a drummer walk into the studio to record an updated version of Foggy Mountain Banjo. But this one's no joke. Tyson Rogers and Bryon Larrance are celebrating how the five string has been a thread in their jazz careers by enlisting some A-list grassers to help [...]
Mountain Home Music Company, a division of Crossroads Entertainment, has announced the signing of bluegrass powerhouse Lonesome River Band. The band is expected to start on a new album this month, with plans for a release this summer. Sammy Shelor with LRB says that he and the guys are pumped about joining new label mates [...]
Bill Evans has shared some photos from his recent California Banjo Extravaganza. For the second year in a row, he brought a pair of prominent banjo pickers out west for a weekend of shows and workshops in northern California. This year it was Sammy Shelor and Tony Trischka, both celebrated wherever banjo music is enjoyed, but who [...]
Banjo fans on the west coast will have another real treat with the assembly of three stellar banjo players Tony Trischka, Sammy Shelor and Bill Evans for four concerts in northern California from November 14th to 17th. This year's California Banjo Extravaganza, the second, will also feature in support John Reischman, Chad Manning, Jim Nunally [...]
If you missed Alan Jackson and his all-star band last night on The Late Show with David Letterman - or just want to watch it again - the video is embedded below. He performed Blacktop from his current release, The Bluegrass Album, with Tim Crouch on fiddle, Rob Ickes on resonator guitar, Sammy Shelor on [...]
New York City? That's right, folks. Alan Jackson is traveling to New York with his Bluegrass Album band to perform music from his new record at a concert tonight at Carnegie Hall. Assisting will be the same bluegrass all-stars who tracked with Jackson this Spring: Adam Steffey on mandolin, Sammy Shelor on banjo, Rob Ickes [...]
