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From time to time a reviewer runs across an album that is a good listen, but in the big tent that is today’s bluegrass world, is hard to identify for the listener.   Fortunately, Mohavisoul offered extensive notes for their latest album, Stories and Memories. They refer to their sound as “California Bluegrass.” Cool. Wait,…

It’s no surprise that this youthful, effervescent Toronto-based trio (joined on this outing by bass player and vocalist Charles James) won IBMA’s 2020 “Momentum Band of the Year” trophy. These twelve original songs bristle with intelligence, immediacy and innovation in the form of captivating lyrics, compelling melodies and nonpareil vocal and instrumental arrangements that feature…

The playing and singing on this duo’s second album make the listener feel like this is a collaboration that was almost meant to happen.  On many of these tracks the relentless rhythm of De Groot’s banjo and Hargreaves’ fiddle is like a high-velocity metronome churning out eerie and old-timey tonalities. Yet at the same time…

This exquisitely conceived and rendered third solo project by Jeremy Garrett, best known for his membership in the award-winning band The Infamous Stringdusters, is chock-full of finely textured and nuanced arrangements and original songs informed with sometimes urgent emotional intensity. Garrett, who wrote or cowrote all but one of these twelve cuts, of course serves…

Progressively Traditional Bluegrass “Pioneers” Formed in 2014, the group brought together four talented young musicians in their twenties, from different parts of the country, with a desire to make a living doing something they loved while having a stable home life. Although their original expectations were low, their passion, energy, enthusiasm, and work ethic were high,…

That Traditional Bluegrass Sound In the February, 1967 edition of Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine, Pete Kuykendall wrote an editorial regarding the state of bluegrass music at that time.  He proposed that the bluegrass music that was recorded pre-1955 was “a preference across the country of almost ten to one.”  After making that statement, Kuykendall proceeded to…