Articles

East Kentucky-born Carl Bentley grew up singing in church in and around his hometown of McDowell. At age 10, he was given a Ralph Stanley album featuring Keith Whitley by his father, who was also a musician.  That was all it took. To this day, Bentley still wears the Stanley-Whitley influence, and wears it well….

Seven-time national fiddle champion, Grammy nominated recording artist, teacher, singer, touring musician, and flatfooter, Megan Lynch Chowning, hasn’t forgotten the challenges facing a newcomer and transitioning fiddle student. This teacher has true talent in recalling the apprehension and desire newer fiddlers have on where to start, how to learn particular songs and practical ideas on…

Photos By Chris A. Courogen Paul Beard hasn’t always made squareneck resonator guitars. It just sort of seems that way to him after almost 40 years doing it.  “I’ve been doing this for so long,” says Beard, who built his first one in 1985, after a peak at the insides of the second hand OMI…

Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz have delivered us a real gem here. Lost Voices is an album over a hundred years in the making, spun of tales that are distant, yet closely connected. It is a record that has traveled the land through mountains and heart worn highways of America. With the exception of the…

Not much time passes before there’s a fresh musical salute to one or another of bluegrass’s founding figures. These tributes not only strengthen and reaffirm bluegrass’s crucial links to its past, they also seem to provide a subtle moral compass in terms of reinforcing the music’s integrity with each new generation of musicians. Along those…

Although the title of this album suggests departure, when you start listening it feels like you’re arriving at a family cookout. The musicians are the well-seasoned burgers, brats and brisket and the notes of their instruments are flowing like cousin Joe’s famous apple wine. The songs are all the comfort food fixin’s you love, speaking…