Reviews

The Kody Norris Show For a minute or five, a listener might think they’ve pulled the latest Kody Norris Show CD from the vintage bin, not from the new releases pile of 2021. Don’t let the young face fool you—the sound is deeply traditional on All Suited Up. None other than bluegrass veteran Greg Cahill…

Branded Bluegrass Indiana-based Branded Bluegrass decided to try a few different things with the release of their third album.  Somebody’s Child is a bit of a departure from the usual traditional bluegrass the band favors. The group also added some special guests of note to play on the project — Shawn Lane, Michael Cleveland, Steve…

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…