Reviews

Ever since Earl Scruggs stepped on stage with Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys in December of 1945, banjo players have been interested in learning how to play the five-string banjo like Earl.  Early banjo players slowed down recordings and went to watch Earl play in order to figure out how he was executing those…

In 2015, Seth Mulder and some friends began playing at the local Ole Smokey Moonshine Distillery in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The group based their music on traditional bluegrass with a more modern approach, and by 2018, Seth and Midnight Run band became official. Since then, the band has gained in popularity, and they have been busy…

The Bay Ramblers were a San Fransisco Bay Area bluegrass band that performed for a couple of years in the mid-1980s at venues like Paul’s Saloon and the Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival.  Some of the shows at those two venues were recorded live, and Sandy Rothman, who was the banjo player in the band, has…

Ben Garnett is best known in bluegrass circles as the longtime guitarist with Missy Raines and Allegheny. But he’s also a rising star on the new acoustic music scene. It was while majoring in jazz guitar performance at North Texas University that Garnett discovered artists such as Tony Rice, the Punch Brothers, Darol Anger, and…

In my opinion, John Reischman does everything that relates to playing the mandolin extremely well.  His tone, timing, dynamics, phrasing…you name it, he does it at the level of mastery.  A few other things that he can do extremely well—which proves to me that he is not only a phenomenal mandolin player, but also an…

The Horsenecks hail from the western Oregon area of Astoria. They are the duo of Gabrielle Macrae (fiddle, bass, banjo, harmonium, guitar, vocals) and Barry Southern (guitar, banjo, resonator guitar, vocals). This new project, their fourth, is a mix of mostly original tunes from Macrea along with a few from Southern. They are joined by…