Reviews

Something Beautiful Like the holiday drink Hot Buttered Rum, the band is a complex recipe that cannot be easily replicated. Described on their website as “a souped-up, Left Coast string band,” the San Francisco group’s seventh CD Something Beautiful is a ten-track odyssey through bluegrass, jazz, folk, and soul. Erik Yates (vocals, banjo, and resonator…

I Have Known Women: Songs by Si Kahn Celebrating Women’s Lives and Struggles On the 100-year anniversary of American women winning the right to vote, Saro Lynch-Thomason and Sam Gleaves have released a collection of 13 songs penned by Si Kahn—most never recorded before. Female subjects are profiled, ranging from the local midwife “granny woman…

Inside the Lines This is the second release for western North Carolina’s Nick Chandler & Delivered. It is also the debut outing for the newest members of the band. With Chandler on mandolin, he is joined by Will Eller on banjo and Hudson Bosworth on guitar. Both are students at East Tennessee State enrolled in…

Skunk in the Alley This is a one man show, and it is impressive. Asti plays all of the instruments and moves between bluegrass and old-time music. He wrote three of the tunes here, including the title-track. He does an impressive job of twin banjos on “Reuben’s Train 45,” and his mandolin, fiddle and guitar…

Smithsonian Folkways The title alone should have you getting out your credit card. But if you need further enticement, this is a special and unique project put together by producer Peter K. Siegel from recordings he made in 1962 at gigs in New York City, where a then almost unknown guitarist and singer, Doc Watson,…

Ghost Tattoo This Americana band consists of Kristen Grainger, lead vocalist and writer for eight of the twelve numbers on the project; Grainger’s spouse, Dan Wetzel on guitar, vocals and octave mandolin; Martin Stevens on mandolin, fiddle and vocals; and Josh Adkins on acoustic bass and vocals. They form the band from across Orgeon and…