Articles

Hatfield Delivers the Real McCoy It’s an age-old conundrum for anyone trying to learn a new instrument.  You first buy a cheap banjo, guitar or mandolin to see if you even enjoy playing it. The further you progress, and the more time you put in, the more your instrument’s shortcomings become apparent. Pretty soon you’re ready…

Photo by Elliot Carter, Courtesy of ROMP Festival Anyone that has spent a long weekend at an outdoor bluegrass festival knows the importance of being well-equipped and well prepared. Whether you are baking under the hot sun, getting drenched from a torrential downpour, or finding yourself ankle deep in mud, it is essential to have…

“This album is for me an extension of my grandfather’s front porch,” writes Matthew Stallard, a retired English professor, gifted musician and formidable researcher of both traditional music and his own family’s storied history. “It’s a piece of him that I can carry with me that no one can take away from me.” Stallard calls…

Best known for his songwriting of jam band style music for his St. Paul, Minnesota-based group Big Wu, Chris Castino took advantage of the COVID isolation over the past two years to rework and rearrange some of his catalog into bluegrass tunes. For this new project he has gathered together his friends in the Chicken…

This young, award-winning fiddler and long-time bandmate of Darin and Brooke Aldridge makes a confident and impressive solo debut with this fine outing.  Arrowhead, who was once a featured musician in the IBMA’s annual Kids on Bluegrass program, also proves to be an accomplished singer and songwriter with wisdom and artistry beyond her years. You…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1986, Volume 20, Number 8 East Tennessee, the late 1950s, a boy just entering adolescence chops a borrowed mandolin, hoping to find the same licks he heard Bill Monroe play on the Opry the Saturday night before. The boy summons up the courage to wrap the mandolin in a…