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“Details,” the opening track of Dumas’s second solo album, an uplifting and encouraging love song, jumps right out at you in a warm and welcoming manner that persists through this entire 11-song collection. Dumas, of course, is the sort of celebrated musician from whom we’d expect nothing less. The Grammy-nominated, IBMA award-winning singer and mandolin…

Many bluegrass fans and scholars mark the beginning of bluegrass music, as we know it today, from the date in late 1945 when Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys.  However, the band had been active on the Grand Ole Opry, in various configurations, since 1939.  During those first six years, Monroe…

Like Tony Rice and David Grisman before him, guitarist Ross Martin fords across genres, treading the borders of jazz and bluegrass. A longtime member of the Matt Flinner trio, and regular duet partner of Grant Gordy, Martin is equally at home picking on a fiddle tune, navigating the tight corners of a Bud Powell composition…

Photo by Jamie Plain Determination and a Dream Icons are created by following their own paths.  Jimmy Martin’s legacy in bluegrass music is the result of determination, blind dedication to the music, and the courage to do things his way.  Inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 1995, Martin’s influence within the genre…

The Faces Behind The Pinecone Bluegrass Show In 1984, Raleigh, North Carolina’s WQDR radio (94.7 FM) changed its format from rock to country.  That same year several Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) area musicians and dancers got together to form the Piedmont Council for Traditional Music (known as PineCone), a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, presenting, and…

I’m going to have to start this review on a personal note.  The author of this book was a good friend of mine, who I worked with for twenty years in my job as the editor and publisher of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine.  I received this book in the mail from Mel Bay Publications and, about…