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Photos by Kevin Slick “I think it’s the 50th anniversary of Rocky Grass and Craig Ferguson is always looking for ways to respect tradition while also welcoming new audiences,” says Nick Forster. “And he was just steadfast in his commitment. He just said, ‘Look…we have to have Hot Rize. We cannot do the 50th anniversary…

Finally Takes Place with Potential for the Future Intact The Earl Scruggs Festival has been in the works for years now, yet the pandemic reared its ugly head and the hard decision to postpone it for two years in a row was made. Many music festivals had to shut down for at least one year…

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…

The ProPik brand of finger and thumb picks that are used by banjo, Dobro, fingerstyle guitar, and autoharp players have been available for forty years.  The story of how the company got their start is an interesting one.  It begins in 1982 when a guitar-playing design engineer named Jim Mapson, who lived in Orange County,…

“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…

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,…