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Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my late 1950s interest in folk music and blues turned toward bluegrass around 1958-9. By 1960, I had been “bit by the bug,” as they say. In August of that year, the Redwood Canyon Ramblers, the local college band, gave a concert where I met their singer…

Photos Courtesy of Alisa Murphy People describing the Station Inn, Nashville’s iconic music venue, use such words as home and family. Some call it magic. An Ohio couple who retired to Nashville for the music and who regularly attend the Sunday jams and Monday shows called it their church. Greg Cahill of Special Consensus, looking…

Bluegrass has never been known as a producer’s music. The bands get famous; the producers of their albums don’t. Unlike their counterparts in such genres as rock, soul, hip-hop, or country, bluegrass record producers have mostly toiled in obscurity, their contributions known only to a few. Jim Dickson deserves better than that, deserves to be…

In my opinion, John Reischman does everything that relates to playing the mandolin extremely well.  His tone, timing, dynamics, phrasing…you name it, he does it at the level of mastery.  A few other things that he can do extremely well—which proves to me that he is not only a phenomenal mandolin player, but also an…

Q: I just found that Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs actually recorded “The Family Who Prays Never Shall Part.” I know this is an old Louvin Brothers song, but do you know by chance when Flatt and Scruggs recorded it? Wayne Hoffman, via email. A: The song was never commercially recorded by Flatt & Scruggs,…

The best. Proclaiming someone as the best this or that is a highly subjective and contentious undertaking, almost certain to create heated debate. So, to hedge the bet a bit: if twenty-five-year-old Trevor Holder is not the best banjo player on the scene right now, he’s in the top two or three. And if he’s…