Reviews

Don’t think that it is hype or marketing hyperbole to read that Sideline’s latest album, Ups, Downs and No Name Towns is their best project to date.  For a group that literally started as a part time gig for a group of outstanding pickers—hence the name, Sideline—it is a big statement to claim “best.” After…

We live in a golden era for flat picks, with custom and boutique pick makers producing beautifully fashioned plectrums in a truly bewildering range of space age materials, shapes, and bevels. Into that market comes C.F. Martin with its newly introduced Luxe Contour Pick. Using a shape similar to the Blue Chip TP-1R, it features…

A concept album of 16 songs focusing on stories and characters from the Cumberland Gap area of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia takes the listener back in time. Twenty-seven artists whose familes are originally from the region are featured, with lead vocals from Teddy Cosby, Bryan Turner, Phillip Powers, James Clark, Joseph Wilson, Randall Massengill, Jason…

If you’re one of the many who have stayed close to home during the COVID pandemic of 2020-21, here’s your chance to live vicariously through the adventures of Australian bluegrass radio broadcaster Jan Dale as she chronicles her American journey that took place over a period of six years in the 1990s. Her goal was…

If it wasn’t for the Birchmere, I probably would not have had a career in bluegrass music.  I grew up in Springfield, Virginia and my childhood home was exactly ten miles door-to-door from the second Birchmere, located on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Alexandria.  I then went to college at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis,…

Don Schlitz (guitar) is an award-winning songwriter who has garnered two Grammys as well as being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame. These are just few of his awards as he has written songs for such as Kenny Rogers, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Randy Travis, Keith Whitley, The…