Reviews

Much Further Out Than Inevitable: A Fiddle and Banjo Tribute to Some Music of John Hartford

This here’s a mighty fine tribute to the legendary John Hartford. It is arranged and played by Chris Coole on banjo and John Showman on fiddle. The Canadian duo have picked twelve of their favorite Hartford tunes spanning over thirty years of his career, including cuts from Hartford’s Mark Twang, Aereo-Plain and Good Old Boys…

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Lost Voices

Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz have delivered us a real gem here. Lost Voices is an album over a hundred years in the making, spun of tales that are distant, yet closely connected. It is a record that has traveled the land through mountains and heart worn highways of America. With the exception of the…

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Details

“Details,” the opening track of Dumas’s second solo album, an uplifting and encouraging love song, jumps right out at you in a warm and welcoming manner that persists through this entire 11-song collection. Dumas, of course, is the sort of celebrated musician from whom we’d expect nothing less. The Grammy-nominated, IBMA award-winning singer and mandolin…

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Stringbean: The Life and Murder of a Country Music Legend

Many bluegrass fans and scholars mark the beginning of bluegrass music, as we know it today, from the date in late 1945 when Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys.  However, the band had been active on the Grand Ole Opry, in various configurations, since 1939.  During those first six years, Monroe…

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Sylvan Tunnel

Like Tony Rice and David Grisman before him, guitarist Ross Martin fords across genres, treading the borders of jazz and bluegrass. A longtime member of the Matt Flinner trio, and regular duet partner of Grant Gordy, Martin is equally at home picking on a fiddle tune, navigating the tight corners of a Bud Powell composition…

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Radio John: Songs of John Hartford

If you can’t have a good time listening to Sam Bush play and sing nearly every note of music on his new tribute CD to friend and mentor John Hartford, well there just may be no hope for you, friend. Filled with memories both happy and sad, this isn’t an album to obsess over how…

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