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Up the Hill and Through the Fog
It’s no surprise that this youthful, effervescent Toronto-based trio (joined on this outing by bass player and vocalist Charles James) won IBMA’s 2020 “Momentum Band of the Year” trophy. These twelve original songs bristle with intelligence, immediacy and innovation in the form of captivating lyrics, compelling melodies and nonpareil vocal and instrumental arrangements that feature…
River Wild
This exquisitely conceived and rendered third solo project by Jeremy Garrett, best known for his membership in the award-winning band The Infamous Stringdusters, is chock-full of finely textured and nuanced arrangements and original songs informed with sometimes urgent emotional intensity. Garrett, who wrote or cowrote all but one of these twelve cuts, of course serves…
When Heroes Become Friends
Bob Minner Pays Tribute to Norman and Nancy Blake Although Bob Minner has spent the majority of his musical life over the past thirty years performing as a member of country star Tim McGraw’s band, he is still a bluegrass flatpicker at heart. By the time he was twelve, Bob was studying the guitar playing…
Dobro Joe’s Dobro School
If you’ve ever searched “Dobro Lessons” on YouTube, you’ve probably come across the lessons posted by “Dobro Joe” Wilson. You can also find a couple of lessons from Joe on the lessons page of the Bluegrass Unlimited website. While it is generally harder to find Dobro lessons than lessons for guitar, mandolin, banjo, or fiddle,…
Hatfield Banjos
Hatfield Delivers the Real McCoy It’s an age-old conundrum for anyone trying to learn a new instrument. You first buy a cheap banjo, guitar or mandolin to see if you even enjoy playing it. The further you progress, and the more time you put in, the more your instrument’s shortcomings become apparent. Pretty soon you’re ready…
Fresh Pickles
Best known for his songwriting of jam band style music for his St. Paul, Minnesota-based group Big Wu, Chris Castino took advantage of the COVID isolation over the past two years to rework and rearrange some of his catalog into bluegrass tunes. For this new project he has gathered together his friends in the Chicken…