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Tunes & Ballads
Tim Stafford On his latest solo CD, Tim Stafford artfully carries the listener from the redolent smells of greasepaint, bison sweat and saddle leather inside the big top tent of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to the gruesome and much publicized serial murders in Victorian London’s Whitechapel District (which oddly are overlapping eras) in a…
Cascade
Wes Corbett Padiddle Records “Cascade” is banjoist Wes Corbett’s first solo project since becoming the newest member of the Sam Bush Band. Corbett, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, now resides in Nashville where he also teaches banjo. Corbett cites his influences as Earl Scruggs’ banjo style, but also the melodic…
Companion To The Bluegrass Banjo For The Compete Ignoramus
By Wayne Erbesen Native Ground Music Long before the self-deprecating series of “Books for Dummies,” there was a banjo book for ignoramuses. This is the latest book in that series. It builds upon the author’s previous book, Bluegrass Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus. Unlike many books that spoon-feed information to the user while asking for…
Willie Marschner
Willie Marschner Patuxent Records The wizardry of this 13-year-old fiddler and mandolin player from Fairfax, Virginia is nothing short of astounding. Granted, he’s already spent quite a few years learning his chops in the Marschner family band, along with his father Pearse (also a multi-instrumentalist) and his bass-playing mom Catherine. Even so, he’s obviously a…
A Tribute to Flatt and Scruggs
Carnegie Tradition Raincoe Music DSR202002 Bluegrass music is no doubt in an era of stretching forward and sideways with musicians carving out new spaces, just like the founders in the 1940s. However, the new album by Carnegie Tradition reaches backward to revisit those earlier days when the music was making its way with A Tribute…
Live From The Don Owens Show, Washington, D.C., 1958-1959
Bluegrass Champs Yep Roc Records YEP-2555 I woke up this morning with the chorus of “Rock-a-Bye Boogie” going through my head. Just the words “rock-a-bye boogie” sung over and over, in a syncopated style, to a boogie-woogie beat. I’m obsessed with it. To me, this is the standout number in this collection of live performances…