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Warren Wilson College While it has only been around for a short time, Warren Wilson College’s Traditional Music program is well on its way to being a go-to destination for Appalachian culture immersion.  Now offering a major (BA) and a minor in music with a concentration in Traditional Music, the program features “a unique concentration…

Peter Rowan was working on a project during the pandemic that was supposed to be a tribute to Hank Williams and his alias, Luke the Drifter. He changed gears and the reimagined product is Calling You From My Mountain.  It’s hard to imagine that the original idea could have topped this one. Rowan wrote seven…

Shannon Slaughter offers a little bit of everything and almost everybody on his new album, Ridin’ Through the Country.  One thing is unchanged from his previous efforts, though—it is dyed-in-the-wool bluegrass to the core. There are 15 songs on the album and Slaughter wrote or co-wrote nine of them.  There is a long and impressive…

Mescalito Riding His White Horse: Insipred by The Musical Adventures of Peter Rowan is part Rowan biography, part author Mike Fiorito’s autobiography, part Peter Rowan interview, part Fiorito dream journal, part song lyric analysis, and part exploration of Buddhism.  All of that makes this book a fairly wild ride, but Fiorito is able to weave…

This ensemble from the hills of western North Carolina has a unique and exuberant groove that is, at once, musically sophisticated yet determinedly rustic. It tends to draw listeners right in. On Pretty Little Goat’s third album you can hear this distinctive sensibility on traditional numbers like “Uncle Joe/ Leather Britches” and “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” as…

Queries Q: When it comes to Clarence White’s guitars, it seems most of the attention is given (and not inappropriately so) to the iconic 1935 D-28 that ended up in Tony Rice’s hands. But, from what I’ve read, Clarence used the D-28 mostly for rhythm (perhaps owing to it not being set up very well)…