Articles

Two Masters of Flatpicking Join Forces Photos by Joshua Black Wilkins Years ago I wrote an article about Norman Blake and stated that if there were a Mt. Rushmore for flatpicking guitar, the players whose faces would be carved in that mountain would be Doc Watson, Clarence White, Dan Crary, Norman Blake and Tony Rice….

Missy Raines grew up in West Virginia and spent much of the 60’s and 70’s, along with her family, going to music festivals in the Baltimore, Washington, D.C. area. She got her first bass at the age of 10, and it soon became her only and best instrument. Over the years, she cut her musical…

The “Pickin’ On” series on CMH Records may have started as a whim or a novelty, but after three decades and dozens of releases, it’s become a cottage industry.  By now, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Eagles have all been “picked on,” along with seemingly less likely candidates like The Doors, Green Day, The…

When Marty Falle writes, he thinks in records, not singles. “That’s what I believe the original singer-songwriter artist is all about,” he says. His formula, which works for him, is “to write the record: write what’s in your heart, in your experience.” To judge by the radio play and the number of tracks charting off…

In their time, The Country Gentlemen were one of the most influential groups in bluegrass. From their founding in 1957, over the next several decades, they recorded dozens of albums as key members came and went. The Gentlemen were among the first to broadly expand bluegrass’s vocabulary by bringing in material from other genres. In…

Happily, you may have noticed that an increasing number of young people are playing in top bluegrass bands or leading their own bands. Names like Wyatt Ellis, Gibson Davis, Liam Purcell, Noah Goebel, Sammy Mougin, Ashlyn Smith, and the Sullivan Sisters are but a few. Add to that list The Brothers Young.   The Brothers…