The Sound
The Old Man and the C-Clamp
Photos by Cindy Matheson At an age when most people have slowed down, 99-year-old Buckeye luthier and instrument repairman Jeff Littell rises by 7:30 and is at his well-equipped, dimly lit basement workbench after breakfast most days. His days fill with repairing double-basses, fixing all manner of bluegrass instruments, and even building a C.F. Martin…
Hot Rodding The Baddest Instrument In Bluegrass
Bluegrass has always tenbrooks’ed the fast and the powerful. Racehorses, big rigs, steam drills, sleek trains and burly freights cannonball through bluegrass standards. I’m sure there must be bluegrass from the ‘50s and ‘60s that mirrored the California car culture pop of Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys, but I can’t think of any…
Rob’s Reso Room and Reso Summit
If you are learning to play the Dobro and are having trouble finding quality instruction, you need look no farther than Rob’s Reso Room. Rob’s Reso Room is an internet-based teaching platform developed by fifteen-time IBMA “Dobro Player of the Year” Rob Ickes and his business partner Craig Spinney. Launched two years ago, Rob’s…
Tradition & Innovation
Covering All—Or at Least Some Of—the Basses Once upon a time the A. P. Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers were revolutionaries. A traditionalist scholar once complained that—by introducing guitar into songs that had been previously sung unaccompanied—the Carters just ruined them. Jimmie Rodgers featured jazz players and Hawaiian musicians on some of his recordings, and…
Tell Me You’re Not Leaving
Photo by Joe Worthem It’s been a few years since Volume Five cut the poignant “Tell Me You’re Not Leaving” for Milestones, the band’s seventh record for label Mountain Fever. Far from a traditional bluegrass barn burner—something this band can get around—the slower, reflective song reached #2 on Bluegrass Today charts. Lead singer Glen Harrell…
Bill Evans and the 5-string Banjo
Photo by Snap Jackson Photography One constant in Bill Evans’ 40-plus-year banjo career is helping others learn to play and listen to music. He began teaching in his hometown, Norfolk, VA in the 1970s, while still in high school, not long after he picked up the five string. Evans remembers sitting in the living room…