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The word authenticity hangs, like a heavy tree limb, over every conversation about roots music. As the umbrella of acoustic music has expanded to cover music that resembles bluegrass and folk in instrumental texture alone, many traditionalists have expressed concern over a divorce from its aural history. They posit that to pick up a banjo…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February, 1974—Volume 8, Number 8 “Right now, where would you get bluegrass records? Would you buy them in a rock store, or would you buy them in a country music store?” asks Tony Rice of J.D. Crowe and the New South. “Both.” “Right!” he continues. “You just don’t find bluegrass…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine December 1972, Volume 7, Number 6 The remarkable entry of young and talented musicians into the ranks of professional bluegrass in the last few years has been marked by progressively larger and larger steps away from the traditional roots from which the music has grown. This is a natural and…

Bill Emerson was a founding member of the Country Gentlemen.  The band formed in 1957 as a trio with Bill Emerson on the banjo, John Duffey on the mandolin, and Charlie Waller playing guitar.  After a short time they added Larry Lahey on bass.  The group originally came together to hold a weekly spot at…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine August 2016, Volume 51, Number 2 Just one day before Dr. Ralph Stanley passed on June 23, 2016, musician Lucy Cochran posted the now-famous video of Stanley singing “Pretty Polly” with Patty Loveless and the Clinch Mountain Boys on Facebook. Cochran is an excellent fiddler whom I first saw play…

Trailhead Records Roots is an interesting and fun album just on the merits of spinning in the CD player.  But on closer inspection when the listener finds out it was literally created with a one-man band and that the one man—Liam Purcell—wrote all but one song (he co-wrote the other), it becomes an even more…