Articles

VARIOUS ARTISTS SCENIC CITY SAMPLER: A SWEET SAMPLING OF CHATTANOOGA MUSICIANS AND SONGWRITERS, VOLUME 1 Buckeye Ridge No Number It’s true, Chattanooga is a hot bed of great music. Tucked between Atlanta and Knoxville, not far from Alabama, it is becoming a Mecca of sorts for musicians of varied stripes, as this fine collection demonstrates….

DIRT SIMPLE FIDDLE—BY MARY ANN WILLIS Mel Bay MB21381BCD. (Mel Bay Publications, Inc., #4 Industrial Dr., Pacific, MO 63069, www.melbay.com.) This is an ambitious and interesting instructional manual for learning the fiddle. There is a lot of ground covered in these sixty pages and twenty-one tunes. Starting with an introduction describing what a fiddle is…

DONNA ULISSE ALL THE WAY TO BETHLEHEM Hadley Music Group HMG1010    This is a wonderful and remarkable story told in song that depicts the events leading up to the birth of Christ. Based on Biblical accounts and totally written or co-written by Ulisse, she tells this story through the many voices of Joseph the…

MARKSMEN QUARTET THIS IS MY CROWD Rural Rhythm Christian RCH-2015 For forty years and nearly forty albums, the quality of the gospel music experience offered by the legendary Marksmen Quartet has been among the best in the genre. This latest finds them with the same lineup as in 2007 and, most importantly, still among the…

ROGER AND J.D. WILLIAMS WILLIAMS SQUARED Happy Appy Records HAR-8 Father and son. Those are the brick-and-mortar constants appearing on each track of this 12-tune, all-instrumental recording. Otherwise, resonator guitarist, bassist and father, Roger Williams, and mandolinist, bassist and son, J.D. Williams, each took charge of half. Each wrote six tunes and programmed them in…

MARK STRUHSACKER COLD OUTSIDE No Label No Number Appreciating a recording such as this is easy. From the first track to the last, we’re treated to honest and basic and good music. With the exception of track ten, titled “Evening,” a mildly, rambunctious Louvin-style mandolin/guitar/vocal duet looking at the joys of the gathering night, nothing…