The Artists

No Boundaries Photo by Russ Harrington She has been called a Renaissance woman and a trailblazer and Alison Brown’s groundbreaking accomplishments certainly live up to those claims. While she is widely known as a banjo player, calling her a banjo player is like calling Picasso just a painter.  Over the course of her distinguished career,…

Photo by Irene Young Maybe there really was something in the water in San Francisco back in the day. “The City,” as it’s called throughout northern California, is different from other American cities in countless ways: historically, culturally, politically, demographically and on and on. The poet Dylan Thomas once wrote, “You wouldn’t think that such…

Photo by Aaron Clark Photography Some family musical partnerships are marked as much by personal conflict as by blood harmony. This is not the case with The Petersens, a family bluegrass band that has become a favorite in Branson, Missouri. With four siblings as the core of the band, anchored by their parents, both musicians,…

Let Time Ride “I’m very, very thankful to be a jack of all trades and a master of none,” says Joe Mullins, smiling. “I’ve had to do everything to get anywhere.” He’s only halfway correct here: over a career spanning more than three decades (and with no end in sight), he has certainly done everything….

Presides Over One of the Most Important Two-Week Spans in Bluegrass History The rise of Billy Strings has been an amazing thing to watch. While playing a combination of open-minded, progressive roots music next to straight-ahead bluegrass, he has garnered a following that boggles the mind. Several years ago, Strings began to sell out the…

It has been a rough two-and-a-half years for Pam Rice. On Christmas Day of 2020, her long-time husband passed away at their house in Reidsville, North Carolina. For Pam, it meant witnessing the transition of her beloved spouse. For the rest of the world, however, that was the day that Tony Rice—simply one of the…