Articles

Asheville, North Carolina is located deep in the heart of bluegrass country.  There has been a long tradition of bluegrass music in that area and many of the heroes of bluegrass music have called, or still call, Asheville home.  However, the guy who is responsible for teaching bluegrass at the college level in Asheville started…

Berea College Every year in July, since 2021, Bluegrass Unlimited has featured a series of articles titled “Bluegrass Goes to College” where we feature a number of college-level bluegrass music programs.  If you have been following this series, you may have notice that the name Raymond McLain pops up several times.  Raymond was involved with…

For many of us with a fascination with both the tonalities and the designs of vintage instruments, a visit to a place like Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, with its collection of guitar rarities, is like to a visit to the Louvre in Paris or the Boston Institute of Fine Arts. In a virtual sense, this…

Over the past 15 years or so, the guitar industry has embraced a controversial, even divisive, new trend: relicing new guitars to make them sound, appear and feel like they’ve been played for decades. Some people love this, and companies like Pre War Guitar Co. have carved a strong niche in this area. Others, however,…

Daryl Mosley, a former member of New Tradition, the Osborne Brothers band and The Farm Hands, is a charismatic singer and a remarkable songwriter.  The songs on his third album, much like on his 2020 The Secret of Life and his 2021 follow-up Small Town Dreamer, poignantly capture everyday virtues, sentiments, reminisces and musings on…

Though still a relatively young man, Ben Krakauer has put together a remarkable career. He’s been a professor and lecturer at a number of prestigious universities. He’s an ethnomusicologist who has studied and written on topics ranging from experimental bluegrass in New York City in the 1970s to the dotara players of West Bengal. Krakauer…