The Artists

Photo by Arnold Flenor Mackenzie Bell is a 15-year-old fiddle player who was born in Guatemala, adopted at the age of seven months, and has grown up just 10 miles from Bill Monroe’s hometown of Rosine, Kentucky.  When she was 7-years-old she heard a friend play the fiddle and thought that this was something that…

Photo by Daniel Coston For nearly half a century, fiddling ace Mike Hartgrove of the Lonesome River Band has been traveling highways across America playing bluegrass and country music.  “Mike is a road pro,” says Lonesome River Band leader Sammy Shelor. “The guy has been on the road since he was 17 years old, about…

Photos by Sheri Oneal lthough Ashley Campbell carries the DNA of one of the most talented singers and instrumentalists in the history of American music, she did not aspire to be a musician when she was young.  The youngest daughter of country music legend Glen Campbell said, “My brothers Cal and Shannon where more into…

Born Over A Bluegrass Bandstand Photo by Sheri Oneal In awkward adolescent script scrawled in his high school yearbook, amidst the well wishes and inside jokes from his buddies, one theme appears several times: “See you on the Glen Campbell Show.” “I look back, and I wonder how they knew that,” says the yearbook’s owner,…

Bob Dylan said it in 1964, “The Times, They Are A Changing.”  Around that time, the Civil Rights Movement was burning a hole in our consciousness sometimes dividing North and South, and bluegrass music was still emerging from diverse musical forces.   In 1964, Bill Monroe’s band included Steve Arkin and Don Lineberger on banjo,…

Justin and Sierra aren’t quite sure when their first meeting was. She had seen him play at local festivals with Kentucky Wind. He remembers meeting her at an IBMA convention one year. After years of friendship and Justin filling in with Sierra’s band on various instruments, somewhere along the way their friendship began to blossom…