Articles

Last week we introduced you to bluegrass music in Japan, the Otsuka Brothers, and the formation of the Japanese bluegrass band Bluegrass 45.  In this week’s article (what we are calling “week 0”) Akira Otsuka will reveal how meeting Ian and Sylvia Tyson at the Osaka Expo in the summer of 1970 led to a…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1974, Volume 8, Number 11 “I never was much of a believer in astrology until last winter, when I read horoscope and it said I was going to have a good spring. Well, now it’s spring, and things are going so good, I guess there’s something to be said…

It has been fifty years since the Japanese bluegrass band Bluegrass 45 toured the United States—from June to September in 1971. In order to help document this tour and give Bluegrass Unlimited readers a better understanding of the popularity of bluegrass in Japan and how a Japanese band was received in the United States in…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited MagazineMay 1974, Volume 8, Number 11 In the early years of bluegrass, a large number of combinations rather quickly took up the style being popularized by Bill Monroe and his band. While it is true that most of the elements of the bluegrass style had been around for several years and…

Kurt & Andrea Stephenson Traditional bluegrass fans will find a lot to like in the first release by the husband-wife duo of Kurt & Andrea Stephenson. The self-titled album features a dozen tunes that will be familiar to first generation fans.  The couple kicks things off with Reno & Smiley’s “Sockeye” and ends with the…

Leftover salmon “These are the brand new good old days/ My used to was got stuck in yesterday/ It’s never more now than it is today,” sings guitarist Vince Herman on the title track from Leftover Salmon’s eighth studio album.  “Brand New Good Old Days,” is a song so infectious it immediately lodges itself at…