Reviews

Best known for his songwriting of jam band style music for his St. Paul, Minnesota-based group Big Wu, Chris Castino took advantage of the COVID isolation over the past two years to rework and rearrange some of his catalog into bluegrass tunes. For this new project he has gathered together his friends in the Chicken…

“This album is for me an extension of my grandfather’s front porch,” writes Matthew Stallard, a retired English professor, gifted musician and formidable researcher of both traditional music and his own family’s storied history. “It’s a piece of him that I can carry with me that no one can take away from me.” Stallard calls…

Australia’s New South Wales is a long, long way from the hills and hollows of Virginia and Kentucky. Yet after listening to this delightful album from Australian wunderkind Angus Gill, it sure doesn’t sound that far away at all. The collaborators who’ve pitched in with Gill as cowriters and studio collaborators—Jerry Salley and Jim Lauderdale among them—are…

If you don’t know the tale of Roland White and brothers Clarence and Eric White,  who were born in Maine, moved as kids to California, and influenced every subsequent generation of bluegrassers, then you don’t know the full story of bluegrass. Fortunately, Bob Black’s superb new biography of the oldest of the White brothers demonstrates,…

Sometimes, when faced with an album the reviewer likes and appreciate the artistry involved, it is challenging to describe the work when it doesn’t really fit anywhere.  That’s the case with Indoor Vistas, the latest effort from Ethan Sherman.  From the stunning cover art to the first-class picking, it’s all enjoyable — but it doesn’t…

On her first release as a bandleader, Molly Tuttle displays all the talents and traits that have helped her rise to the summit of the modern bluegrass pyramid. On Crooked Tree, she’s also invited most of her peer group including Billy Strings, Sierra Hull, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Ketch Secor, and Dominick Leslie, as well as grizzled…