Reviews

Bluegrass music veteran Mickey Harris (see Bluegrass Unlimited, August 2022) has recently released a new solo album titled Things That I Like.  After listening to the album, I decided that in terms of bluegrass singing, instrumentation, arrangements, musicians and song selection, Mickey and I like the same things.  It is a wonderful album stem to…

Musicians talk about trying to catch lightning in a bottle during a show or with a hit song and sometimes with an album.  Appalachian Road Show’s third album, Jubilation, does that and no doubt will find itself on the shortlist for album of the year at the 2023 awards shows. After country music legend Dolly…

Dave Berry is a San Francisco area mandolinist who has created this instrumental project of all-original material with the help of a host of guest artists. On fiddle there is Jee-Hee Haar, Kyle O’Brien, Joe Osborn, Andy Lentz, Helen Lude, Leah Wollenberg and Brandon Godman (violin). Guesting on guitar are Jesse Poteralski, Josh Smith, Olivier…

Georgia’s Bibb City Ramblers were formed in 2007 by friends Brian Fowler (mandolin) and Dan Davidson (guitar, harmonica, vocals). In 2010 the duo was joined by Dan’s wife Gini Davidson on bass and vocals. Then in 2020 fiddle player Dan Campbell signed up, rounding out the band to a foursome. Focusing on and influenced by…

This is simply one gem of an album, guaranteed to warm even the cynical, holiday-averse hearts. It’s also a lovely, down-home and heartfelt alternative to the canned carols that are force-fed to us at places like Walmart—intended, I suppose, to encourage us to shop more and buy more stuff. The Perfect Gift is also a…

In the increasingly crowded arena of custom and boutique flatpicks, we’ve seen an interesting trend develop. One on side, we find makers who’ve discovered that certain existing industrial materials developed for wildly different purposes than plucking the string of a guitar or mandolin can be fashioned into world-class plectra. The second track we see is…