The Tradition

Harboring The Legacy Photo by Megan Sweeting Briar Fork was in many ways your typical holler in eastern Kentucky, a rural road off State Route 32, four miles from Sandy Hook, near the Little Sandy River. Elliott County has some of the prettiest scenery in the state. It’s not exactly in the bluegrass region that…

Queries Q: I’m producing a new CD album of my band, The Bluegrass Ramble, here in Japan. The new album will be a live 2-CD set with 36 songs and will celebrate the Bluegrass Ramble’s 200th show in October 2022. We are now in the process of designing the package. I am having trouble finding…

The Bluegrass Years This year—2022—is going to be a huge year for Keith Whitley fans. We will watch as Keith receives one of the highest honors a country music singer can achieve—induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I have been following and studying Keith’s career since I became interested in bluegrass in 1985….

Bluegrass Musician And Recording Impresario I have known Tom Mindte since the mid-1970s when he was a frequent patron of Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Rockville, MD. My band, Appalachian Reign, played there on Saturday nights and he was one of our biggest fans. Tom grew up in a household that loved music. His Dad, Vance,…

Queries Q: We’re having a little controversy in our bluegrass community regarding the definition of the title of the fiddle tune “June Appal.” Is it simply a misspelled reference to certain apples that will bloom early or is it a reference, somewhat in abbreviation, to the word Appalachia? Or is it something else? Hope you…

I’ll have to confess that the first record album that I owned was not a bluegrass album.  I was a suburban kid listening to rock radio in the 1960s and my first album was Paul Revere and the Raiders Spirit of ’67.  When I got the album, I not only listened to the music over…