Articles

“In a dreary Yankee prison where a rebel soldier lay.”  That is the opening line to the Charlie Moore classic “The Legend Of The Rebel Soldier,” which Moore had recorded on his 1974 Old Homestead release, The Fiddler. But it was the Country Gentlemen’s cover of the song a year earlier on their 1973 Rebel…

Bob Dylan said it in 1964, “The Times, They Are A Changing.”  Around that time, the Civil Rights Movement was burning a hole in our consciousness sometimes dividing North and South, and bluegrass music was still emerging from diverse musical forces.   In 1964, Bill Monroe’s band included Steve Arkin and Don Lineberger on banjo,…

Photo by Amanda Rowan Annie Staninec (featured in Bluegrass Unlimited, May 2017) is a stellar bluegrass fiddle player of Japanese/Czechoslovakian descent who grew up in San Francisco, California and currently lives in Portland, Oregon.  She learned to play the fiddle at a young age and became interested in bluegrass because her father played the guitar…

Photo by Arnold Flenor Mackenzie Bell is a 15-year-old fiddle player who was born in Guatemala, adopted at the age of seven months, and has grown up just 10 miles from Bill Monroe’s hometown of Rosine, Kentucky.  When she was 7-years-old she heard a friend play the fiddle and thought that this was something that…

Photo by Daniel Coston For nearly half a century, fiddling ace Mike Hartgrove of the Lonesome River Band has been traveling highways across America playing bluegrass and country music.  “Mike is a road pro,” says Lonesome River Band leader Sammy Shelor. “The guy has been on the road since he was 17 years old, about…

Photo by Eleanor Wilkie Matt Flinner was touring nationally in a bluegrass band as a pre-teen.  Around 1980, Ted Shupe of Ogden, Utah formed a band of 10-year-olds around his fiddle-playing son, Ryan (now with Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband) and they called themselves the Pee Wee Pickers.   The band’s talent earned them spots…