Reviews

This is the second album from one of the most exciting new ensembles on the scene.  For starters, the members are all highly accomplished instrumentalists and nearly all have served as sidemen for some of the biggest names in the business.  On top of that, they are nearly all singers, which brings an impressive variety…

It would be hard to over-state what an impressive outing Rick Faris’s sophomore album is. Faris, IBMA’s 2022 “New Artist of the Year,” who spent 11 years as the guitarist/mandolin player/singer with the band Special Consensus, has all the right tools in his tool kit. The Wichita, Kansas-based artist, who grew up in a family…

PATUXENT CDD-361 McGeehan is best known as the bassist for the south-central Pennsylvania band “Serene Green.” Now stepping out on his own, McGeehan (bass & vocals) has gathered together an impressive group of musicians for this new project. They include Chris Luquette (guitar), Ellery Marshall (banjo), Brett Kretzer (mandolin), Alex Hargreaves (fiddle), Jack Devereux (fiddle),…

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,…

For many of us with a fascination with both the tonalities and the designs of vintage instruments, a visit to a place like Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, with its collection of guitar rarities, is like to a visit to the Louvre in Paris or the Boston Institute of Fine Arts. In a virtual sense, this…

Mike Mitchell’s first album with Turnberry Records was released just before Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and the timing couldn’t have been an accident. Fathers & Sons is about family relationships and strikes more than one personal note. Mitchell, a native of Canada, lives and runs a music school in Floyd, Virginia, part of the…