Reviews

It’s fitting that the 50th anniversary project for Lost & Found is literally an album that’s been lost for more than a decade.  In 2013, the seminal group was working on a project for Mountain Fever Records when health issues for Allen Mills put the project on hold. The “lost” hard drive was recently found…

Over the past 15 years or so, the guitar industry has embraced a controversial, even divisive, new trend: relicing new guitars to make them sound, appear and feel like they’ve been played for decades. Some people love this, and companies like Pre War Guitar Co. have carved a strong niche in this area. Others, however,…

Robbie Fulks is a bluegrass guy who started his career in bluegrass, but then waited until his 16th project to do a full-blown bluegrass album. Listeners of his Bluegrass Vacation will likely say it was worth the wait after one spin through the player. Fulks has spent decades in the music business, best known as…

Leftover Salmon’s genius is how they take the old and reimagine it into something new.  Over their thirty-year career they have toyed with the fabric of bluegrass and roots music, stretching and pulling it into something uniquely their own, yet something that still maintains the integrity of where it was born.  Their latest album, the…

West Virginia-born Greg Blake, a remarkable singer, accomplished flat picker and long-time member of the band, Special Consensus, has been playing music nearly his entire life. But for three decades his singing and picking played second fiddle while he served as a pastor at various churches in the Midwest and West. Now that he’s retired…

Thrift is an old-time fiddle player from North Carolina who first picked up the instrument while on a trip to British Columbia in 1974. Completely self-taught, Thrift honed his skills by listening to lots of the music and even spent time with the Greengrass Cloggers to learn more of the old-time culture.  Returning to North…