Articles

Preparation meets opportunity Photos by Joseph Tipton For a Murfreesboro, Tennessee-based multi-instrumentalist whose musical roots stretch back six generations and predate the 1927 Bristol Big Bang, Mickey Harris is remarkably low-key. That simple acceptance of a musical heritage is the basis for his career with High Lonesome, Tim Graves and Cherokee, Larry Stephenson, Sally Jones…

The Suwannee Spring Reunion Photos by Frank Serio In March 2022, I went to the Suwannee Spring Reunion to write about the event and interview a few musicians.  I had no idea what to expect. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I had never been to a music festival. Although I went to cover…

Casey Henry was only four years old when her mother, Murphy Hicks Henry, started teaching students throughout the world how to pick the 5-string banjo via her highly acclaimed Murphy Method instructional tapes and, a year later, her articles in Banjo Newsletter.  So, seeing how adept Casey is on the 5-string today, you’d think that…

By Don Cusic Sometimes, it takes a while for a song to find the perfect home. “It Rains Everywhere I Go,” written by Don Cusic in the late 1970s, didn’t find its just-right singer for more than two decades. Ultimately, the song was released on Lynn Morris’s Mama’s Hand in1995 by Rounder Records, and Rounder…

When you visit your favorite venue or festival and watch the bands perform, you may often find yourself in awe of the talent of the musicians on stage and you can appreciate the years of hard work that it took for them to get to that place.  What you might not think about though is…

I’ll have to confess that the first record album that I owned was not a bluegrass album.  I was a suburban kid listening to rock radio in the 1960s and my first album was Paul Revere and the Raiders Spirit of ’67.  When I got the album, I not only listened to the music over…