Articles

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited MagazineJuly 1972, Volume 7, Number 1 Imagine, if you can, a big-name bluegrass band—one which usually has a superior banjo player—stepping out onto the stage to greet their cheering, enthusiastic fans. With them is a new banjo player—very new—like, 14 years old, and a complete unknown. The fans are more than…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited MagazineAugust 1974, Volume 9, Number 2 Some two decades ago, a young Kentucky-born factory worker from Springfield, Ohio, went to Nashville, in hopes of getting an established country singer to record a song he had written. Although he had made something of a reputation as a part-time performer around local radio…

A Music Seldom Heard Written By Dale McCurry with Bambi Grinder “Make it about the music,” Mike Smith implores. “Don’t make it about me. It’s about the music.” Mike said this in preparation for a story I was to write about him a decade or so ago. I remember he followed me to the parking…

Photos by Sheri Oneal lthough Ashley Campbell carries the DNA of one of the most talented singers and instrumentalists in the history of American music, she did not aspire to be a musician when she was young.  The youngest daughter of country music legend Glen Campbell said, “My brothers Cal and Shannon where more into…

Born Over A Bluegrass Bandstand Photo by Sheri Oneal In awkward adolescent script scrawled in his high school yearbook, amidst the well wishes and inside jokes from his buddies, one theme appears several times: “See you on the Glen Campbell Show.” “I look back, and I wonder how they knew that,” says the yearbook’s owner,…

Photo by Daniel Coston For nearly half a century, fiddling ace Mike Hartgrove of the Lonesome River Band has been traveling highways across America playing bluegrass and country music.  “Mike is a road pro,” says Lonesome River Band leader Sammy Shelor. “The guy has been on the road since he was 17 years old, about…