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What I Know Now
Steve Bruce is a local pastor in LaFollette, Tennessee, who is also a banjo player and songwriter. On this project of his original material, Bruce is accompanied by his son Andrew Bruce (guitar, bass, resonator guitar), and guests Ron Stewart (mandolin, fiddle), and Glen Duncan (fiddle). This is an all-instrumental project with Bruce’s excellent banjo…
Tennessee Moon
Mark Whitt makes no bones about his love for playing and promoting traditional bluegrass music. One need to look no further for the evidence of this Kentuckian’s desire to preserve the old time sound than his third album, Tennessee Moon. Whitt went into the vault to cover tunes from Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe and Carter…
Hazelnut
Charmaine Slaven and Charlie Beck met while exploring and promoting the old-time music and dance scene in the local Seattle, Washington Area. They continued in the manner for a few years and eventually resettled in the Brasstown, North Carolina area, and, along with daughter Hazel, they immersed themselves in the historic musical legacy of the…
Gold Heart Locket
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…
Mike Munford and the Soulful Machine
“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…
Lincoln Hensley
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,…