Reviews

OMAC Records Mark O’Connor’s original flatpicking guitar album Markology, recorded after winning Winfield twice as a teenager, inspired countless bluegrass guitarists. Backed by Tony Rice, Dan Crary and Sam Bush on a couple of tracks, O’Connor simply leapt off the recording into every flatpicker’s consciousness, eventually landing the role of filling Tony Rice’s guitar chair…

Mountain Fever Records Amanda Cook was born and raised in Florida and cut her teeth playing with her father in a band called High Cotton. Since then, Cook, in both musical and geographic terms, has made the greater Appalachian and Blue Ridge region her adopted home. Songs such as “West Virginia Coal,” “My Used To…

DS.M 20 Feb. 23, 2019 is a date fiddle legend Byron Berline will always remember with sorrow. A fire erupted in historic downtown Guthrie, OK where Berline had run his historic Double Stop Fiddle Shop for decades, destroying his business and an adjoining store. Berline, who was on a golf vacation in Mexico when the…

The publicity photos accompanying this release show Eli West at work in a small country chapel. In one particularly striking photo, he is seated in a pew, bathed in wan sunlight with his head bowed reverentially over his notepad with a microphone and cell phone in front of him. This photo in particular foretells the…

Shefa Records You’ve probably heard of rock operas, but would you believe a Civil War banjo opera?  Once you hear that it’s a Tony Trischka project, you’ll probably think, “Oh, okay, yeah.” Trischka has been pushing genre boundaries since his first album nearly 50 years ago. Shall We Hope is 18 tracks of spoken word,…

MGPR0003 Martin Gilmore is a talented singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from the Denver, Colorado area. He has performed around the U.S. and he recently returned from a two-year stint living in Cairo, Egypt, where he was able to perform in both Europe and Africa. He has performed with artists including Hot Rize, Uncle Earl, Infamous…