Reviews

Published by MOC Press Mark O’Connor has written an emotional detailed account of his experience as a child musician. He first started on guitar as a six year old and began learning fiddle at age eleven.  He was a quick learner and at age twelve he won first place in the Junior Division at The…

“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…

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…

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…

The Path I Choose to Walk, the debut album from Humbletown, a duo from South Dakota featuring Morgan Carnes on banjo and Dylan Lewis on guitar and mandolin, is the sound of warm spring air, with its gentle melodies and vocals that bend, sway, and twirl, dancing in perfect harmony.  The contrast between the two…

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…