Articles

A crusty old banjo player once quipped that twin fiddles are like cilantro; a little bit goes a long way. But longtime friends Jason Carter and Michael Cleveland and their roster of all-star players annihilate that snarky, uninformed comment in a single album. You will want to keep their new project, Cleveland & Carter, on…

Tony Kamel, former frontman and principal songwriter with the band Wood & Wire, is a talented present-day practitioner in the Guy Clark-Townes Van Zandt Texas singer-songwriter tradition. Many of Kamel’s songs are topical – vivid character sketches, reflections on fatherhood, etc. – and are shot through with homespun philosophy. He’s a gifted lyricist, has an…

The Henhouse Prowlers are international bluegrass troubadours in the truest sense of the word.  Over the past two decades, they’ve performed and held workshops in nearly 30 countries (from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to Uganda and Kyrgyzstan)  on five continents, often under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. Yet there are no signs of…

From Brush Arbor To Bean Blossom And Beyond Within the expansive genre of bluegrass, gospel music is arguably more popular today than at any time in its history. Most of today’s bluegrass bands include gospel music on recordings and in stage shows, and some record all-bluegrass gospel albums. While the melding of bluegrass with spiritual…

New Single Resurrects a Lost Classic Bluegrass Song By Richard Hefner  The great 1970s Song “Million Lonely Days” by the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys Becomes New Again The IBMA Award-winning duo of Kenny and Amanda Smith are no strangers to West Virginia. Amanda is a Mountain State native who was raised near Parkersburg. The husband…

In a bluegrass world where bands see regular turnovers, Mark Stoffel is an anomaly.  For the past 16 years, the mandolin ace for Chris Jones and the Night Drivers has been laying down a solid chop on tours across the country and with his creative innovations on sevenof the group’s CDs. After growing up in…