Articles

Solitary Diamond Photo by Scott Simontacchi Solitary Diamond, the title of Laura Orshaw’s debut album, resonates on a number of levels. The words themselves come from a couple of songs from the project, but they refer to a concept, too. The songs on Solitary Diamond, she says, tell stories from different vantage points of those…

Color His Songs Red, White, And Blue And Emerald Green “Around 1990, [Rebel Records owner] Dave Freeman asked if I had any songs I’d like to send to Larry Sparks,” Ferguson recalls. “I sent ten songs. One day I received a letter from Larry Sparks. He said he liked about eight of those songs, and…

Celebrating 15 Years of Bringing Western North Carolina Bluegrass to the World Photo By Caty Smith When it comes to the top tier of bands that have found success in this uniquely-American music genre we call bluegrass, the story of the rise of Balsam Range is tale of good things coming from an impromptu house jam,…

Unless banjo pickers frequent  the most advanced musical circles in Nashville, they are unlikely to walk into their local bluegrass jam and find someone calling out a tune from Wes Corbett’s recently released Cascade album.  So why the need for a book notating—in painstaking detail—each of that record’s ten ambitious tracks? Corbett, a current member…

West Virginia University For bluegrass music fans, West Virginia represents the heartland of the deep and rich musical traditions of Appalachia.  The old rural mountain lifestyle that first generation bluegrass singers remember fondly in their songs about the old log cabin and the homeplace have been passed down in the bluegrass music tradition in such…

Colorado College Colorado College, located on a ninety-two acre campus in downtown Colorado Springs, is a small liberal arts college comprised of only two thousand total students (only 500 of the 20,000 annual applicants are accepted each year).  The difference between Colorado College and the many other small four-year liberal arts institutions in the United…