Reviews

Graber gryass Don’t say they didn’t warn you…The Facebook page for Graber Gryass lists the band as “Hard-hitting, joy-inducing original music and earth-bound bluegrass, acoustic psychedelic music from Memphis, TN. A collective joy-making machine. Astral yet rooted to the magnetic core.” After giving a listen to the group’s debut album, Late Bloom, it’s as good…

Picks and their various materials and shapes are debated endlessly in online instrument forums. One new entrant to that conversation is the Chris Thile Signature Mandolin Pick from D’Addario (#2CA7-01CT), which the bluegrass mandolin world has been giving a lot of positive chatter to lately. The standard triangle pick with rounded points is made from…

Tim Stafford On his latest solo CD, Tim Stafford artfully carries the listener from the redolent smells of greasepaint, bison sweat and saddle leather inside the big top tent of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to the gruesome and much publicized serial murders in Victorian London’s Whitechapel District (which oddly are overlapping eras) in a…

Wes Corbett Padiddle Records “Cascade” is banjoist Wes Corbett’s first solo project since becoming the newest member of the Sam Bush Band. Corbett, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, now resides in Nashville where he also teaches banjo. Corbett cites his influences as Earl Scruggs’ banjo style, but also the melodic…

By Wayne Erbesen Native Ground Music Long before the self-deprecating series of “Books for Dummies,” there was a banjo book for ignoramuses. This is the latest book in that series. It builds upon the author’s previous book, Bluegrass Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus. Unlike many books that spoon-feed information to the user while asking for…

Willie Marschner Patuxent Records The wizardry of this 13-year-old fiddler and mandolin player from Fairfax, Virginia is nothing short of astounding. Granted, he’s already spent quite a few years learning his chops in the Marschner family band, along with his father Pearse (also a multi-instrumentalist) and his bass-playing mom Catherine. Even so, he’s obviously a…