Reviews
Paige Clik ETI Guitar Capo
In 1988, a tool and dye maker named Bryan Paige couldn’t find a capo that kept his guitar in tune. So he used his machining skills to design and make his own. Paige’s affordable, practical design caught on, and soon, his Michigan-based company found international success with its understated but innovative design. Today, you can…
Stories and Memories
From time to time a reviewer runs across an album that is a good listen, but in the big tent that is today’s bluegrass world, is hard to identify for the listener. Fortunately, Mohavisoul offered extensive notes for their latest album, Stories and Memories. They refer to their sound as “California Bluegrass.” Cool. Wait,…
Hurrican Clarice
The playing and singing on this duo’s second album make the listener feel like this is a collaboration that was almost meant to happen. On many of these tracks the relentless rhythm of De Groot’s banjo and Hargreaves’ fiddle is like a high-velocity metronome churning out eerie and old-timey tonalities. Yet at the same time…
Up the Hill and Through the Fog
It’s no surprise that this youthful, effervescent Toronto-based trio (joined on this outing by bass player and vocalist Charles James) won IBMA’s 2020 “Momentum Band of the Year” trophy. These twelve original songs bristle with intelligence, immediacy and innovation in the form of captivating lyrics, compelling melodies and nonpareil vocal and instrumental arrangements that feature…
River Wild
This exquisitely conceived and rendered third solo project by Jeremy Garrett, best known for his membership in the award-winning band The Infamous Stringdusters, is chock-full of finely textured and nuanced arrangements and original songs informed with sometimes urgent emotional intensity. Garrett, who wrote or cowrote all but one of these twelve cuts, of course serves…
Hobe
“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…