Articles
IssueM Articles
The New Tradition
Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine August 1973, Volume 8, Number 2 “Tradition — Something handed down from the past; an inherited attitude, culture, etc.” Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary It was 9:30 at night on Saturday, June 2nd, at the Indian Springs Bluegrass Festival near Hagerstown, Maryland. Since Friday at 7:00 p.m. the ever-swelling crowd had…
Joe Mullins—It’s Going To Swell Your Heart
Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine July 1995, Volume 30, Number 1 Joe Mullins is passionate about bluegrass music. And he loves to share that passion with others, much, one gathers, as his musician father, Paul, originally did with him, 25 years ago. These days the two of them are kindling the flames of bluegrass fervor…
Bluegrass Vacation
Robbie Fulks is a bluegrass guy who started his career in bluegrass, but then waited until his 16th project to do a full-blown bluegrass album. Listeners of his Bluegrass Vacation will likely say it was worth the wait after one spin through the player. Fulks has spent decades in the music business, best known as…
Grass Roots
Leftover Salmon’s genius is how they take the old and reimagine it into something new. Over their thirty-year career they have toyed with the fabric of bluegrass and roots music, stretching and pulling it into something uniquely their own, yet something that still maintains the integrity of where it was born. Their latest album, the…
Muleskinner & Clarence White
Fifty Years Ago a Landmark Band was Formed and a Guitar Legend Passed Muleskinner The story of the legendary, extremely-short-lived band Muleskinner began fifty years ago when fiddler Richard Greene received a phone call from the public television station in Los Angeles. The station asked Greene to put together an all-star band of younger bluegrass musicians…
People, Places And Songs
West Virginia-born Greg Blake, a remarkable singer, accomplished flat picker and long-time member of the band, Special Consensus, has been playing music nearly his entire life. But for three decades his singing and picking played second fiddle while he served as a pastor at various churches in the Midwest and West. Now that he’s retired…