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Mickey Abraha m
How to Win Friends, Influence People, and Play the Guitar Meet Mickey Abraham: Teacher, musician, and all-around good fellow. Longtime subscribers to Flatpicking Guitar Magazine will already be well familiar with Mickey, as his excellent monthly instructional guitar column and tablatures have graced the pages of the flatpick.com website beginning around 2008 and continue on…
Landis Finger Picks
Setting The Standard For Art And Function What do you get when you combine a master metalsmith/engraver with a multi-instrumentalist? In the case of Ron Landis, the answer is that you get custom crafted sterling silver fingerpicks unlike any other fingerpicks currently available. While Archimedes postulated that “the shortest distance between two points is a…
Story Behind The Song Sin City
By Chris Hillman & Gram Parsons You might wonder what place a Flying Burrito Brothers song has in the world of bluegrass. Quite a worthy one, as you’ll see from the history of the iconic “Sin City,” penned by Chris Hillman (The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Desert Rose Band, Manassas) and the late Gram…
Rare and Fine: Unknown Tunes of Bill Monroe
Don’t be fooled by the overalls and Mississippi River-stained drawl, Mike Compton is actually a hard-boiled, gum-shoed detective on a relentless cold case to uncover as much of Bill Monroe’s music legacy as possible, both his compositions and Monroe’s playing style. His ongoing comprehensive book of Monroe transcriptions, last we heard, was around 500 pages…
On the Bus with Bill Monroe: My Five-Year Ride with the Father of Bluegrass
Touring with Bill Monroe was notoriously difficult. Still, with Monroe’s foundational place in the history of bluegrass, it was a rite of passage that many musicians were not only willing but eager to endure. Monroe’s death in 1996 has of course shut the door to any future opportunities to tour with the “Father of Bluegrass.”…
Too Late Now
Susan Nikas is a singer-songwriter from the San Dimas area of California. Her career began in 1987 when she joined the band Clay County as their singer. Clay County was founded by banjoist Jim Dawson, and mandolinist Frank Abraham. Bassist Jim Logue joined them in the studio but was soon replaced by Leslie Spitz. It…