Articles

For bluegrass players, finding the right pick is crucial. Shape, thickness, material, bevel and tone all play a role in how a picker extracts the sound they seek from their instrument. In recent years, the introduction of new aerospace-grade materials and the demand for custom shapes has triggered an explosion in pick choices beyond the…

Hailing from the Big River area around SE Missouri, the aptly named Riverbend is a five-piece band with a style rooted in traditional bluegrass. Over 11 tunes here, the band shows a deft hand with high tenor lead voices and the driving Monroe-style mandolin of Andy Navara to bring a very traditional sound to their…

NOTES “I was pleasantly surprised to see that you mentioned and pictured Lacey Jenkins Daugherty, writer of ‘Beautiful Lost River Valley’ in the March 2021 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited. Let me add to the story.  I used to own a Christmas tree farm in Hardy County, West Virginia. Friends there knew I was a bluegrass…

For over half a century, old-time/bluegrass music has connected the author with a wide variety of interesting and highly talented people, including autoworkers in Flint, Michigan, musicians in New Zealand, and Virginians transplanted to Detroit. The following is a selective appreciation. On the Fourth of July weekend in 1971, I attended Carlton Haney’s bluegrass festival…

Photo by Jamie Alexander “JT was a big wheel in the business,” said the award-winning songwriter and bluegrass musician Larry Cordle just days after the death of the Station Inn’s JT Gray on March 20th, 2021. “This is what blows my mind about him losing his life. I mean, he just got his due. He…

“In a dreary Yankee prison where a rebel soldier lay.”  That is the opening line to the Charlie Moore classic “The Legend Of The Rebel Soldier,” which Moore had recorded on his 1974 Old Homestead release, The Fiddler. But it was the Country Gentlemen’s cover of the song a year earlier on their 1973 Rebel…