Articles

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine September 1982, Volume 17, Number 3 The Washington D.C. area is full of veteran bluegrass musicians who learned to play in the ’50s, when both they and the music were young. Over the years, most of them migrated to the nation’s “bluegrass capital” from Appalachia. Guitarist and singer Leon Morris,…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine December 1972, Volume 7, Number 5 The Dopera Brothers’ resophonic guitar probably has reached its greatest success in the capable hands of Josh Graves, who brought the acoustic slide guitar to Carnegie Hall for the first time when the Flatt and Scruggs organization played there in the early 1960s and…

The bluegrass arena has no shortage of brilliant fiddlers and Michael Cleveland is front and center among them.  This fiddling phenomenon has won no fewer than 12 IBMA “Fiddle Player of the Year” Awards as well as six annual IBMA “Instrumental Performer of the Year” Awards.   Along the way, he’s also picked up a…

West Virginia native Greg Blake has the kind of earnest and persuasive voice that you could listen to all day. It’s a voice capable of conveying nuanced layers of intimacy and empathy.   When you listen to Blake, you might feel as if he’s sitting in your living room relating some of these intensely emotional…

This impressive young band from Owensboro, Kentucky, home of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum, is starting to get some well-deserved attention beyond the banks of the Ohio River. Kentucky Shine’s members—JB Miller on guitar, Steven Stewart on fiddle, Ross Clark on bass and Jordan Riehm on banjo—are just as at home playing traditional bluegrass as they…

Bill Evans is one of those figures whose name is almost synonymous with the American banjo.  He’s not just an innovator (one fan described him as “the same thing to the banjo that Van Gogh was to color”); he’s also an instructor, student, author (Banjo for Dummies, among other titles) and historian of his chosen…