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Some years ago, these five talented musicians embarked on a long-term mission: to capture for posterity a particular strain of old-timey string band music that was often played at fiddler’s conventions back in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s a style that the Ramblers themselves have been immersed in for nearly a decade. In the liner…

“Home is where we shelter out the storm, and home is where the fire keeps us warm,” sings Leftover Salmon banjo-picker Andy Thorn on the opening track from his new solo release, Fox Songs and Other Tales from the Pandemic, an album crafted during the dark days of a growing worldwide pandemic and a gentle…

During week three of Bluegrass 45’s tour of the United States in 1971 they performed at their third bluegrass festival.  The first was Bill Monroe’s Bean Blossom, the second was the Country Gentleman’s Indian Ranch festival, and this week found them at Carlton Haney’s festival in Berryville, Virginia. As is evident in Akira Otsuka’s journal…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine June 1972, Volume 6, Number 12 The place looks like a composite of all those little Nashville recording studios you read about in Look or Newsweek, once a garage or spare bedroom and now a down home hit factory where the new sound of today’s country music is put down….

Week 2:  6/24 – 6/30 1971-6-24 Thursday Woke up at 8 am – that’s early. Watched “Beverly Hillbillies” rerun. Then DC sightseeing.  First Post office, then the White House, to the top of Washington Monument.  Unfortunately, it was not clear, but we can see the White House and Potomac River right below us.  Had a…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1971, Volume 5, Number 11 Part I: THE CLINCH MOUNTAIN BOYS This is about Curly Ray Cline, Roy Lee Centers, Jack Cooke, and maybe me. Over the last twenty-five years there have been many Clinch Mt. Boys, but this is the present band and thus representative of the Stanley…