The Sound
Brian Wicklund
and the American Fiddle Method In 1998 fiddle player Brian Wicklund wrote and published his first instructional book for fiddlers, titled The American Fiddle Method. To date that book, distributed by Mel Bay Publications, has sold over 75,000 copies. In 2000, a second volume in the series was published. In 2002, Brian was looking for…
You Ain’t Heard Lonesome Yet
“It’s one of those wonderful lines that trips magically off the tongue,” said Donna Ulisse of the title of the song “You Ain’t Heard Lonesome Yet,” cowritten with husband Rick Stanley and cut by Doyle Lawson. “We have a little island out in the kitchen of our ‘Little House,’” said Ulisse, referring to where she…
Mickey Abraha m
How to Win Friends, Influence People, and Play the Guitar Meet Mickey Abraham: Teacher, musician, and all-around good fellow. Longtime subscribers to Flatpicking Guitar Magazine will already be well familiar with Mickey, as his excellent monthly instructional guitar column and tablatures have graced the pages of the flatpick.com website beginning around 2008 and continue on…
Landis Finger Picks
Setting The Standard For Art And Function What do you get when you combine a master metalsmith/engraver with a multi-instrumentalist? In the case of Ron Landis, the answer is that you get custom crafted sterling silver fingerpicks unlike any other fingerpicks currently available. While Archimedes postulated that “the shortest distance between two points is a…
Story Behind The Song Sin City
By Chris Hillman & Gram Parsons You might wonder what place a Flying Burrito Brothers song has in the world of bluegrass. Quite a worthy one, as you’ll see from the history of the iconic “Sin City,” penned by Chris Hillman (The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Desert Rose Band, Manassas) and the late Gram…
Sonia Shell
The Banjo Sound Never Gets Old If you were to picture someone sitting outdoors picking on a five-string banjo, the setting that comes to mind would probably be somewhere in the southern regions of the United States—most likely in the area of southern Appalachia—as opposed to say, southern California. Southern California and banjos are not…