Articles

Bryan Sutton remembers well the times when he was the new young gun guitarist in the bluegrass world. As a young man, he had his eye on moving to Nashville and being a studio musician, and that happened in the mid-1990s. Then, he soon found himself performing and recording with some of the most amazing…

Quick! Name two of Chet Atkins’ hit singles. OK, one? Because of his decades-long success producing hits for other acts and in so doing co-creating with Owen Bradley the fabled “Nashville Sound,” Chet Atkins’ contributions as an artist in his own right have been routinely overshadowed. Yet by the time he died in 2001 at…

Photos by Rocky Northern Rocky Northern, originally from Renfro Valley and now living in Hartford, Kentucky, is gaining recognition as a luthier of fine guitars. Several professional musicians now play his boxes. Becoming an instrument builder has been almost two decades in the making. “I built my first guitar 19 years ago. It was just…

Q: I’ve been listening to recordings by Larry Sparks (Ramblin’ Guitar, Pine Tree 500) and Lee Allen (“Beer, Whiskey, and Women” and “The Old Home Place,” Jalyn 45-356), all of which feature the mandolin work of David Cox. Did he appear on any other recordings? What can you tell me about his life in music?…

Missy Raines grew up in West Virginia and spent much of the 60’s and 70’s, along with her family, going to music festivals in the Baltimore, Washington, D.C. area. She got her first bass at the age of 10, and it soon became her only and best instrument. Over the years, she cut her musical…

In their time, The Country Gentlemen were one of the most influential groups in bluegrass. From their founding in 1957, over the next several decades, they recorded dozens of albums as key members came and went. The Gentlemen were among the first to broadly expand bluegrass’s vocabulary by bringing in material from other genres. In…