Reviews

Daryl Mosley’s bluegrass credentials are impeccable. He did a long stretch as lead singer and bassist in The New Tradition and another stint with The Osborne Brothers.  As a songwriter, he’s won a slew of awards, penned at least a half-dozen number ones and had his originals covered by everyone from The Grascals and Bobby…

This Portland, Oregon-based “bluegrass and Americana” band has a swingy, sassy, versatile and captivating style.  You can hear this vividly on the despairing title tune of Never Come Down’s sophomore album. It has a subtle Latin feel. And here, as well on other original cuts, such as the swing-infused “New Year’s Blues,” “Catch Me,” “Sleepin’”…

This project is the tenth in the Country Faith series of faith-based music recordings by top country artists as created and produced by Deborah Evans Price and Danny McGuffey. This newest collection, co-produced by Jerry Salley, contains 14 songs from some of bluegrass music’s well-known artists performing either newly recorded tunes or taken from the…

The voices of John Cloyd Miller and Natalya Zoe Weinstein, long-time veterans of Asheville, North Carolina’s roots music scene, blend together seamlessly and soulfully on this compelling collection of mostly all original songs.  These 11 cuts range from high-lonesome honky-grass heartbreakers (“Everything But Me”) and old-timey gospel (“That Home Far Away”) to a haunting crime…

Students and aficionados of the clawhammer-style banjo will love this sparkling and captivating debut album by lifelong Baltimore resident Brad Kolodner.  Kolodner, who in the past has performed and recorded extensively with his father Ken (founder and long-time member of the group Helicon) and with Charm City, his own “old-time bluegrass fusion” band, really mixes…

The word authenticity hangs, like a heavy tree limb, over every conversation about roots music. As the umbrella of acoustic music has expanded to cover music that resembles bluegrass and folk in instrumental texture alone, many traditionalists have expressed concern over a divorce from its aural history. They posit that to pick up a banjo…