Reviews

FIRESIDE COLLECTIVE ELEMENTS Mountain Home MH18952    If you’re a fan of energetic and innovative bluegrass sounds, keep reading. If you’re also a fan of bands like the early New Grass Revival, Crucial Smith, or the Farewell Drifters, you should enjoy this debut from Fireside Collective. If all three of these bands had come of age…

THE FAMILY SOWELL SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT No Label No Number This is the latest project from the Knoxville, Tenn.-based Family Sowell, previously known as the Sowell Family Pickers. The family members are Abigail Sowell (mandolin), Jacob Sowell (banjo, guitar), John-Mark Sowell (fiddle), Joshua Sowell (guitar, mandolin), Justus Sowell (resonator guitar), Naomi Sowell (bass), and…

LAURIE LEWIS AND LAURIE LEWIS Spruce & Maple Music 1014 Laurie Lewis is a national treasure, one that keeps giving us fantastic music across the bluegrass and folk spheres of influence. On And Laurie Lewis, what started as a simple project to record duets with some of her favorite musicians, the diva of West Coast bluegrass…

KRISTY COX NO HEADLIGHTS Mountain Fever MFR200100    Kristy Cox started as a mountain girl from the South. That is, from the town of Mount Barker in Southern Australia. Since then, she’s joined many outstanding performers from Australia and New Zealand who’ve found success in America and beyond. Her fine new album No Headlights (her sixth overall…

CRARY, EVANS & BARNICK PRIME TIME Native and Fine Records 906-12 These three veteran musicians bring a sophisticated program of Americana and bluegrass imbued with a warmth that is welcoming and winsome. It’s hard to believe that Dan Crary is 80 when you hear this recording. His voice and musicianship are as sharp and clear…

IRON HORSE CLASSIC BLUEGRASS VOLUME 1 No Label No Number Iron Horse, working from the Muscle Shoals area of Alabama, has released Classic Bluegrass Volume 1 as their seventeenth full recording project. You may know them from twelve CMH recordings on their tribute projects to such groups as Metallica and Ozzy Osborne, to name just a couple….