Articles

The best. Proclaiming someone as the best this or that is a highly subjective and contentious undertaking, almost certain to create heated debate. So, to hedge the bet a bit: if twenty-five-year-old Trevor Holder is not the best banjo player on the scene right now, he’s in the top two or three. And if he’s…

The Bay Ramblers were a San Fransisco Bay Area bluegrass band that performed for a couple of years in the mid-1980s at venues like Paul’s Saloon and the Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival.  Some of the shows at those two venues were recorded live, and Sandy Rothman, who was the banjo player in the band, has…

Explores Pre-Bluegrass Flatpicking Guitar  Cameron Knowler, an expert on pre-bluegrass guitar styles, wants you to know that guitars have feelings, too. So much so that he’s written a brilliant guitar method book by that same name. To support that and his many other projects, Knowler created a private press and webstore called Rural Guitar to…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine June 1990, Volume 24, Number 12 The Hot Rize boys have just been called back to the stage for their third encore at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas. Roses are delivered to the stage by four young ladies and the entire packed house, including a group of guys in the…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine April 1984, Volume 18, Number 10 Ralph Emery talks to guest Tom T. Hall as we return from a commercial break on the Nashville Network’s “Ralph Emery Show”: Ralph: What do you think of when you hear Hot Rize, Tom? Tom: Martha White products, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1976, Volume 10, Number 11 As I sat in my car across the street from the Fifth String on North High Street in Columbus, Ohio, it occurred to me that bluegrass had come a long way there in the years since I’d left town. In the early sixties you…