Articles

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, my late 1950s interest in folk music and blues turned toward bluegrass around 1958-9. By 1960, I had been “bit by the bug,” as they say. In August of that year, the Redwood Canyon Ramblers, the local college band, gave a concert where I met their singer…

Now Touring with Molly Tuttle Molly Tuttle showed up at the ROMP Festival in June of 2025 with a new band (it was their fifth performance).  The configuration of the band she traveled with during the previous few years, Golden Highway, included acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and upright bass.  Her new band was a…

Bluegrass has never been known as a producer’s music. The bands get famous; the producers of their albums don’t. Unlike their counterparts in such genres as rock, soul, hip-hop, or country, bluegrass record producers have mostly toiled in obscurity, their contributions known only to a few. Jim Dickson deserves better than that, deserves to be…

In 2015, Seth Mulder and some friends began playing at the local Ole Smokey Moonshine Distillery in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The group based their music on traditional bluegrass with a more modern approach, and by 2018, Seth and Midnight Run band became official. Since then, the band has gained in popularity, and they have been busy…

Bluegrass fans are always impressed by the musicians who can play blistering fast solos with accuracy, clarity and tone. This skill is certainly impressive and a guy like mandolin player Josh Rilko knows how to do it. However, the thing that impresses me the most about Josh’s mandolin playing is his ability to play solos…

The Horsenecks hail from the western Oregon area of Astoria. They are the duo of Gabrielle Macrae (fiddle, bass, banjo, harmonium, guitar, vocals) and Barry Southern (guitar, banjo, resonator guitar, vocals). This new project, their fourth, is a mix of mostly original tunes from Macrea along with a few from Southern. They are joined by…