Articles

Appalachian State University In the heart of the western North Carolina mountains is the small town of Boone. Named after the historical figure Daniel Boone, who lived in the area for two years in the 1700s hunting and trapping before moving westward through the Cumberland Gap into what is now called Kentucky, Boone also features…

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…

Expands to 5 Days As it Celebrates 25th Anniversary in Southeastern Michigan While a lot of bluegrass music was performed live around the country from the second half of 2021 on, lingering aspects of the COVID pandemic still left artists and music fans on edge as this new year plays out. The good news is…

Geoff Stelling Bids Farewell to Banjo Making After 48 Years It may seem an odd thing to say in an age when the options for professional-quality banjos are plentiful, but there once was a time when they didn’t extend much beyond Gibsons.  But by the mid-70s, when Geoff Stelling was thinking about starting his own business…

Photo by Justin Camerer Although the bass is not the most glamorous of bluegrass instruments, it is certainly just as important as every other instrument in the band.  It is the glue that holds the band together and without glue, you only have disparate pieces.  About twenty years ago I was producing an instruction video…

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…