Articles

Though still a relatively young man, Ben Krakauer has put together a remarkable career. He’s been a professor and lecturer at a number of prestigious universities. He’s an ethnomusicologist who has studied and written on topics ranging from experimental bluegrass in New York City in the 1970s to the dotara players of West Bengal. Krakauer…

Mike Mitchell’s first album with Turnberry Records was released just before Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and the timing couldn’t have been an accident. Fathers & Sons is about family relationships and strikes more than one personal note. Mitchell, a native of Canada, lives and runs a music school in Floyd, Virginia, part of the…

Asheville, North Carolina is located deep in the heart of bluegrass country.  There has been a long tradition of bluegrass music in that area and many of the heroes of bluegrass music have called, or still call, Asheville home.  However, the guy who is responsible for teaching bluegrass at the college level in Asheville started…

Photo by Irene Young Maybe there really was something in the water in San Francisco back in the day. “The City,” as it’s called throughout northern California, is different from other American cities in countless ways: historically, culturally, politically, demographically and on and on. The poet Dylan Thomas once wrote, “You wouldn’t think that such…

Since the days of his youth, Tim O’Brien has sought out the open road of roots music with an open mind. After leaving is home in Wheeling, West Virginia in the 1970s to explore the west of America in old used cars and by thumbing to California, he eventually landed in Colorado where he made…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine December 1977, Volume 12, Number 6 Alot of things have transpired with the Osborne Brothers and their innovations and contributions to bluegrass music. While they have been the subject of many comments about going electric, adding drums, and basically experimenting within the general framework of the music, Sonny and Bobby,…