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Online Lessons for Guitar and Banjo While researching an article that I wrote about Allen Shelton in the December 2023 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited, I ran across a YouTube lesson on Allen Shelton “ideas” by Jody Hughes. I was not familiar with Jody, but he mentioned in the video that Allen Shelton was his “largest…

With the release of Full Cord’s new album Cambium, fans may have to turn to the dictionary to learn that the title refers to the layers of plant cells that promote growth. But wordplay is nothing new to Full Cord, the Michigan-based bluegrass band. Their earlier EP was entitled Choreomania, a reference to the fit…

Bands Blurring the Lines of Bluegrass The idea of the grand voyager can invoke many images in your mind. It invokes the idea of travel, exploration, discovery and a journey. For Baltimore’s Dirty Grass Players it holds all those meanings and more. “Grand Voyager” is a track from their first album, Beneath the Woodpile. The track is…

Photo courtesy of Crossroads Label Group During the latter part of 2023, four-time Grammy-winning fiddler Andy Leftwich spent several of his nights at churches alongside his wife, Rachel, a talented vocalist and niece of his former boss, Ricky Skaggs. The couple and Leftwich’s award-winning band conveyed the spirit of Christmas with their annual show, “’Tis…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1990, Volume 24, Number 8 John Ray (Curly) Seckler, notable pioneer of bluegrass music was born on Christmas day, 1919, near China Grove, North Carolina. Since then he has been proclaimed by many including the late Lester Flatt as the greatest tenor singer in bluegrass music. All the Seckler…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1994, Volume 28, Number 7 What would you say if I told you that we both could go to one festival and on the same bill hear all these performers. Let’s see, there would be Alison Krauss, Michael Doucet, Beausoleil, the Seldom Scene, C.J. Chenier, California, the Basin Brothers,…