Articles

In the increasingly crowded arena of custom and boutique flatpicks, we’ve seen an interesting trend develop. One on side, we find makers who’ve discovered that certain existing industrial materials developed for wildly different purposes than plucking the string of a guitar or mandolin can be fashioned into world-class plectra. The second track we see is…

Steve Bruce is a local pastor in LaFollette, Tennessee, who is also a banjo player and songwriter. On this project of his original material, Bruce is accompanied by his son Andrew Bruce (guitar, bass, resonator guitar), and guests Ron Stewart (mandolin, fiddle), and Glen Duncan (fiddle).  This is an all-instrumental project with Bruce’s excellent banjo…

Finally Takes Place with Potential for the Future Intact The Earl Scruggs Festival has been in the works for years now, yet the pandemic reared its ugly head and the hard decision to postpone it for two years in a row was made. Many music festivals had to shut down for at least one year…

“I had no natural inclination towards music, beyond being drawn to the instrument through this one song that brought me in,”  explains banjo picker Mike Munford, the 2013 IBMA “Banjo Player of the Year,” about his discovery of the instrument that would change his life.  That one song was the Flatt & Scruggs’ classic, “Foggy…

Continuing the Scruggs Style Banjo Tradition Earl Scruggs helped define bluegrass music as we know it today and he originated the style of playing the five-string banjo that formed the foundation for banjo players in bluegrass music.  Many banjo players feel that there has been no one that has matched Earl’s mastery of this style,…

A giant of music, in 1945 and for all time Earl Eugene Scruggs was born Jan. 6, 1924 in Flint Hill, North Carolina, in farm country in the Piedmont region. Early in his life there, he came up with a new, rolling, sometimes blazing-fast banjo style that has kept his name out front through the…