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Jeff Black credits a small-but-mighty banjo with providing inspiration for his song, “Gold Heart Locket,” recorded by Black (B-Sides and Confessions/2003) and later by Sam Bush (Circles Around Me/2009). “I’ll always think that song was in that little banjo,” said Black, during a songwriter’s round at The Bluebird Cafe, Nashville. In an exclusive interview for…

Notes More Mockingbird Walt Crider, the historian for the Seven Mountains Bluegrass Association, wrote: “As a follow up to the ‘Listen to the Mockingbird’ song story (October “Notes & Queries”), I was visiting the Gettysburg National Civil War Museum when I heard ‘Listen to the Mockingbird’ coming from one of the displays. It was about…

A giant of music, in 1945 and for all time Earl Eugene Scruggs was born Jan. 6, 1924 in Flint Hill, North Carolina, in farm country in the Piedmont region. Early in his life there, he came up with a new, rolling, sometimes blazing-fast banjo style that has kept his name out front through the…

Photos by Kevin Slick “I think it’s the 50th anniversary of Rocky Grass and Craig Ferguson is always looking for ways to respect tradition while also welcoming new audiences,” says Nick Forster. “And he was just steadfast in his commitment. He just said, ‘Look…we have to have Hot Rize. We cannot do the 50th anniversary…

Continuing the Scruggs Style Banjo Tradition Earl Scruggs helped define bluegrass music as we know it today and he originated the style of playing the five-string banjo that formed the foundation for banjo players in bluegrass music.  Many banjo players feel that there has been no one that has matched Earl’s mastery of this style,…

“I had no natural inclination towards music, beyond being drawn to the instrument through this one song that brought me in,”  explains banjo picker Mike Munford, the 2013 IBMA “Banjo Player of the Year,” about his discovery of the instrument that would change his life.  That one song was the Flatt & Scruggs’ classic, “Foggy…