Articles

Classic Fiddler From the Early Days of Bluegrass I have recently been listening to some of my older bluegrass albums and kept hearing wonderful fiddle breaks and backup, particularly on the Emerson and Waldron albums. I knew that the fiddler was Bill Poffenberger but I didn’t know much about him. I remember meeting him at a…

Around jam session circles and festival campfires the conversation sometimes turns to bluegrass “conversion” stories. Among the baby boomer generation unless a bluegrass fan grew up in a family that played music at home, chances are good that the first time he or she heard the music was either Flatt & Scruggs on The Beverly…

Geoff Stelling Bids Farewell to Banjo Making After 48 Years It may seem an odd thing to say in an age when the options for professional-quality banjos are plentiful, but there once was a time when they didn’t extend much beyond Gibsons.  But by the mid-70s, when Geoff Stelling was thinking about starting his own business…

Expands to 5 Days As it Celebrates 25th Anniversary in Southeastern Michigan While a lot of bluegrass music was performed live around the country from the second half of 2021 on, lingering aspects of the COVID pandemic still left artists and music fans on edge as this new year plays out. The good news is…

Appalachian State University In the heart of the western North Carolina mountains is the small town of Boone. Named after the historical figure Daniel Boone, who lived in the area for two years in the 1700s hunting and trapping before moving westward through the Cumberland Gap into what is now called Kentucky, Boone also features…

Colorado College Colorado College, located on a ninety-two acre campus in downtown Colorado Springs, is a small liberal arts college comprised of only two thousand total students (only 500 of the 20,000 annual applicants are accepted each year).  The difference between Colorado College and the many other small four-year liberal arts institutions in the United…