Articles

There is a sound that belongs to Raleigh each fall. It rises from downtown streets and echoes between brick buildings. It carries the bright ring of mandolins, the warmth of fiddles, and the rhythm of a hundred tapping feet. It is the sound of bluegrass, and it is the sound of Raleigh Wide Open. Every…

A Life of Music, Stories, and Connections Roscoe VanBuren “Buddy” Hogan, Jr. (August 26, 1935 – October 13, 2025) was a man whose life was deeply intertwined with the world of country and bluegrass music. Although he frequently joked with family and friends that he was a “legend in his own mind,” Buddy lived a…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine April 1996, Volume 30, Number 10 It was a cold and snowy December evening in 1980, when I happened upon, what was then, Partners 2 Restaurant in Centreville, Va. Just recently having relocated from upstate New York to Manassas, Va. I was checking out the local forms of entertainment. The…

The first word that comes to mind while listening to the new album from Aaron and Adam Bibelhauser and their band is “powerful.” There’s a confidence in the playing and singing that shines through every track. The guests on the album sound perfectly at home, adding their own unique flavors in support of the songs….

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine July 1997, Volume 32, Number 1 Those devoted to the bluegrass music’s first generation could compile a list of great sidemen whose names and stories are unfamiliar even as their work lives on in reissued recordings and in the playing of younger musicians who learned from them. Former Clinch Mountain…

By Mike Greenstein Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine July 1977, Volume 12, Number 1 Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys live in Boston, far removed geographically from the nation’s major bluegrass belt. In style and philosophy, however, this quartet with heavy Yankee accents still speaks the language of the bluegrass mainstream. Unlike many…