Articles

Daniel Crabtree, a gifted and divinely inspired songwriter with an engaging roughhewn vocal style, is a man on a mission.  As he explains in the press material accompanying his fifth album: “I believe a spiritual battle is going on inside man and the world …. As Christians, we should be willing to take on the…

It’s not often that bands go on a 10-year hiatus and decide to give things another go.  Traditional bluegrass fans should be glad an old gravestone inspired Maine-based Breakin’ Strings to make the trek to Nashville to produce Hangovers & Heartaches. Cliff Gelena, a third generation bluegrass performer, heads up the group with lead vocals,…

Nearly seventy-eight years after Earl Scruggs first joined Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt, Chubby Wise, and Howard Watts on stage at the Grand Ole Opry—and defined bluegrass music as we know it today—the music is still thriving.  To a large extent, the continued success of the bluegrass genre is due to the hundreds of bluegrass festivals…

Learning how to play a musical instrument by ear is a skill that is vital to your development as a musician in traditional genres of music.  While reading music can also be a valuable skill, in most forms of traditional music—folk, old-time, bluegrass, Celtic, blues—the music is historically handed down aurally.  Musicians who participate in…

In my continuous journey to find and highlight exceptional songwriting, I arrived this month on “Oh, Me Of Little Faith,” a song written for the contemporary Christian genre and successfully introduced to bluegrass fans by the husband-and-wife team of Wayne Benson (Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out) and Kristin Scott Benson (The Grascals) as part…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1981, Volume 15, Number 7  The song on the radio was barely audible over the din of our bluegrass party, but there was something unusual, something “extra lonesome” in the voice filtering through the room that made you stop and listen. The power and intensity were enough to impress…