Articles

As the press material accompanying Mile Twelve’s third album explains, and as most listeners will agree, their music on their third album explodes and smolders with the urgency of trying to make up for lost time. The songs of this Boston-based “acoustic string band” (to use the band’s own description) makes no direct reference to…

Photos by Michael G. Stewart Dede Wyland should be a familiar name to long-time Bluegrass Unlimited subscribers. The first mention of Dede in this magazine occurred in our December 1978 issue when her Wisconsin-based band Grass, Food & Lodging was featured. Five year’s later, after she had moved to New York, Dede was pictured on…

Kathy Kallick’s newest release is all about connections: between Kathy and her mom; between Kathy and her daughters; between older and younger musical generations; and between folk, old-time, and bluegrass musical styles. It is a double-CD set with the first disc featuring Kathy and friends on new studio recordings and the second featuring her mom…

Obviously, bluegrass isn’t just Bela Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart at the Ryman or Sam Bush lording over his domain at Telluride. It’s also—and just as much—the elongated jams around a legendary family campsite at Bean Blossom, the impromptu pick-with-a-star jams in the SPGMA lobby, or your local bluegrass pals getting together for a jam.  …

This celebrated duo is amazingly tight, seamless, self-contained and has just about everything going for it.  Ickes, of course, is one of the all-time masters of the Dobro and has spent decades as one of Nashville’s most in-demand session players. The co-founder and long-time member of Blue Highway garnered enough awards over the years—including a…

Mel Bay Publications Mel Bay Publications has excelled at providing quality instructional material for stringed instruments for 0ver 75 years.   One of their newest offerings for mandolin players displays the quality of material and presentation that students of acoustic music have come to love from this music publisher. Mandolin Picking Tunes—Old-Time Gems provides mandolin…