Reviews

Many bluegrass musicians love to “geek-out” about their instruments.  They talk about the make, the model, the builder, the year it was built, the woods used, the dimensions, the strings, the bridges, the tuners, the nuts and saddles…it is not uncommon for anything and everything about the instruments to be studied, analyzed and discussed.  Since…

If you are a bluegrass banjo player, you are probably already searching the internet for a place to buy this book simply by reading the title (if you don’t have it already).  I’m not sure that I could say anything in this review to change your mind.  So, my job in writing this review is…

Writing about Balsam Range is like trying to write about George Washington or Robert E. Lee or Abraham Lincoln—it takes a minute to find something to say that hasn’t already been said.  After all, they’ve turned out nine albums over the last 14 years and have won so many group and individual awards that’s so…

This North Carolina-based powerhouse band, which marks its 20th anniversary with this impressive album, has just about everything going for it, including four talented lead singers, robust harmonies and a strong in-house supply of original material.  Deeper Shade of Blue also represents a delightful and valuable throwback to the formative mainstream bluegrass styles of the…

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,…