The Artists

Shares Her Own Story in Song Cycle “Jubilee” Fans of the Becky Buller Band are accustomed to story songs—“John D. Champion,” “Calamity Jane” or “The Barber’s Fiddle.” In her latest album project Jubilee, this time the story is her own. She first pitched the idea for the title song to co-writer Aoife O’Donovan when they…

Writing Songs One Idea at a Time Charles Humphrey III is equally adept playing bass guitar as he is casting a trout fly toward a school of rainbows on a winding mountain stream. But one could argue his true calling is writing songs for Songs from the Road Band (SFTRB), the Asheville-based bluegrass/jamgrass quintet he founded…

Celebrating the Crooked Miles Consider Laurie Lewis. She modestly calls herself a “California hippie girl fiddler.” She’s a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, a two-time winner of IBMA’s Female Vocalist of the Year and a two-time winner of the California Women’s Fiddle Championship. She’s performed on both the Grand Ole Opry and the Prairie Home Companion…

The Luck of The Draw Luck plays an uncomfortably large role in life. Though we like to think we have control over our fates, the truth is that a great number of events, actions and encounters are simply out of our hands. Sometimes, God will smile upon you and you will receive an opportunity that…

Michael Prewitt Special Consensus mandolin player Michael Prewitt grew up on an old tobacco farm in Whitley County, a 45-minute drive east of Somerset. It wasn’t until he left Eastern Kentucky for an English degree at grad school in North Dakota that he began to reexamine his bluegrass roots. “As far as making a conscious choice…

Bands Blurring the Lines of Bluegrass “I tell people we are the tradition of bluegrass, the attitude of punk rock and the culture of hip hop,” explains Kenny Feinstein (singer, multi-instrumentalist) of Water Tower.  That declaration perfectly sums up the unconventional musical personality of Water Tower, a Los Angeles-based string-band that is keeping old-timey, traditional…