Articles

By Thomm Jutz and Tim Stafford Thomm Jutz and Tim Stafford have a knack—individually and together—for writing historical-themed songs. The two have cowritten such songs for other artists and for their aptly named duo album, Lost Voices (March 2023), which includes“Take That Shot,” about the place of photography in our lives historically; “Vaudeville Blues,” based on…

Photo by Amy Richmond Michael Cleveland is a well-recognized bluegrass fiddle master. Originally from Henryville, Indiana, Cleveland was born completely blind. Later, a childhood ear infection caused him to lose 80% of his hearing in his left ear and some in his right. Even with this diminishment in hearing, to paraphrase Vince Gill, Cleveland hears better…

Dodi Kallick, Kathy’s mother, was a prominent folk singer in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. Playing guitar and dulcimer to accompany her singing, she was among the handful of performers and enthusiasts who established Chicago as a folk music mecca at the time. She was an early instructor at the Old Town School of…

No Boundaries Photo by Russ Harrington She has been called a Renaissance woman and a trailblazer and Alison Brown’s groundbreaking accomplishments certainly live up to those claims. While she is widely known as a banjo player, calling her a banjo player is like calling Picasso just a painter.  Over the course of her distinguished career,…

Over the course of five albums and a little more than a decade, Natalya Zoe Weinstein and John Cloyd Miller have developed an inspired union of two disparate yet surprisingly compatible musical styles: bluegrass and klezmer. (Their musical journey is detailed in the May 2023 issue of BU.) Bluegrass, of course, needs no explanation here,…

It’s fitting that the 50th anniversary project for Lost & Found is literally an album that’s been lost for more than a decade.  In 2013, the seminal group was working on a project for Mountain Fever Records when health issues for Allen Mills put the project on hold. The “lost” hard drive was recently found…