Articles

Dives Into No Fear You might think it would send shivers down the spine of a teenaged Maddie Dalton joining one of bluegrass music’s hottest acts, Sister Sadie, and that’s exactly what it did. On top of auditioning for the 3-time IBMA “Vocal Group of the Year” and making her Grand Ole Opry debut on…

For those unfamiliar with this Santa Cruz, California-based band, it is an off-shoot of what was once the Tuttle Family Band, which included Molly Tuttle, her father Jack Tuttle, her brother Sullivan and AJ Lee. Now, with Lee at the helm and guitarist Sullivan Tuttle on board, along with Scott Gates (also an excellent guitarist)…

Mastering: The Final Gut Check Even if you have never been in a recording studio, you probably have a sense of the recording process at its most rudimentary level.  Set out a microphone, play or sing into it and a machine records the sounds.  Of course, there is much more to both the art and…

High Lonesome Strings (HLS), the central North Carolina-based bluegrass club, has been in existence for almost 27 years. Pammy Davis Lassiter founded the musical organization in July 1997. It has been going strong and growing ever since with a current enrollment of 202 members. Board member Lassiter, who still handles membership, the G Run Newsletter,…

Even early in his life, John Cowan’s vocal talents surprised and impressed those who heard him. As Cowan, now 70, recalls in his memoir Hold To A Dream, it was the cute sister of one of his friends telling him—“You sing really good!”—that scotched his interest in playing football and motivated him to give his…

Annick Odom, lead singer and principal songwriter of this trio—named after a wild flower that proliferates in Appalachian West Virginia—grew up in two cultures and spend her formative years in both West Virginia and the Netherlands, where she formed this band.  Sweet Joe Pye currently divides its time between Europe and the Morgantown, West Virginia,…