Reviews

ROB ICKES AND TREY HENSLEY THE COUNTRY BLUES Compass Records 746692 Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley’s 2014 debut recording earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. They did not win. Perhaps they lost because they had little or no bluegrass on the record, featuring instead drums and electric guitars and lap steel and four…

CHRIS COOLE THE TUMBLING RIVER Northern No Number Chris Coole’s beautifully crafted second solo CD has the full title: The Tumbling River and other stories sung and played on five string banjo and guitar. Eight of the twelve pieces are original compositions by Chris. “May Day #1,” which opens the CD, and “May Day #2,”…

KRISTY COX PART OF ME Pisgah Ridge 165492 Australian vocalist and guitarist, Kristy Cox has hit her stride as a bluegrass singer to be reckoned with on both sides of the Pacific with her second album for Pisgah Ridge. Award-winning songwriter Jerry Salley produced the project, and he and daughter Maggie Salley provide vocal harmonies….

SECTION HOUSE Mountain Fever MFR 160325 Aaron Ramsey (mandolin), Bryan McDowell (fiddle), Cory Walker (banjo), Jake Stargel (guitar), and Jeff Partin (bass) have created a masterpiece of an instrumental album that ranges from frolicking dance music and blazing bluegrass to post-modern Dawg sounds. The album was “recorded pretty dang live,” says Cory Walker in the…

SAM BUSH STORYMAN Sugar Hill SUG000011 When it comes to the music we call bluegrass today, no one has been as influential in creating that open-ended, freewheeling style of acoustic music than Sam Bush. Starting with his groundbreaking work with the Bluegrass Alliance, the chart-topping records he made with the seminal New Grass Revival, and…

COULDN’T HAVE A WEDDING WITHOUT THE FIDDLER: THE STORY OF TRADITIONAL FIDDLING ON PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND BY KEN PERLMAN University of Tenn. Press. Paperback, 504 pp., $39.95. (Univ. Of Tenn Press, 110 Conference Center, 600 Henley St., Knoxville, TN 37996, www.utpress.org.) This is the crown jewel of Perlman’s extensive research of the fiddling on Prince…