Reviews

If you have ever driven through the old downtown area of Mt. Airy, NC, whether to go to the Mt. Airy Bluegrass & Old-time Fiddler’s Convention or to visit the Andy Griffith Museum and Theatre, you will have probably noticed the Mayberry’s Music Center. The business has been run by James Easter of the legendary…

Mountain Home Sometimes compilations can be kind of … meh. They can often be a random sampler without much cohesion.  Sometimes they turn out to be a historic record, especially when grouped around a theme or instrument, like Masters of Slide: The Spider Sessions, a resonator guitar collection put together by beloved Dobroman Phil Leadbetter….

Mel Bay Publications There are relatively few books on the market today that teach you how to play the upright bass in the context of bluegrass music, so Nate Sabat’s new book Dirt Simple Upright Bass is a very welcome addition to the world of bluegrass instructional material.   In this 46-page book, which also…

It’s no empty figure of speech to say this Canadian mandolin/mandola master’s debut album was nearly two decades in the making. Maybe you could call it perseverance, or maybe you can call it procrastination, or maybe you could call it both. But in his liner notes, McNulty, who spent 40 years as a journalist, explains…

Boar Hog Bluegrass 3408 Bluegrass icon Jack Tottle has a ton of stories to tell, I’m sure. Here, he unfurls a bounty of wonderful, inventive original instrumentals and other tunes to let those stories shine. Buoyed by the floational flatpicking guitar of Tim Stafford, Tottle presents 13 original and traditional tunes here in a mostly…

The Henhouse Prowlers have spent the last eight of their 17 years together as “cultural ambassadors” for the U.S. State Department. In this capacity, they’ve played everywhere from Siberia and the Middle East to various points in Africa and the Americas (75 countries, all told).  As their new album attests, they are worthy representatives indeed….