Articles

Pours his Heart Out on Stage “This is the boss of the family; she’s 17,” Dave Adkins explains as he introduces Lila Jean, one of his many canine friends. The Pikeville, Kentucky, singer/songwriter is definitely a huge animal lover. He can’t turn away those adorable pooch and cat faces and often fosters and adopts four-legged…

50 YEARS OF BANJO You might call Mike Scott of Gallatin, Tennessee, a golden boy. Always smiling, always picking, the banjoist is celebrating 50 years of performance. This is his golden anniversary in the music business. “Fans can look forward to more songs, recordings and perhaps a book,” Scott relayed. A busy man, he definitely…

Michael Prewitt Special Consensus mandolin player Michael Prewitt grew up on an old tobacco farm in Whitley County, a 45-minute drive east of Somerset. It wasn’t until he left Eastern Kentucky for an English degree at grad school in North Dakota that he began to reexamine his bluegrass roots. “As far as making a conscious choice…

Q: I thought I knew everything the Osborne Brothers had ever done, but a friend said they had their own television show sometime in 1950s-1960s. She said her mother had watched them; her mother passed away last spring at 100. My friend insisted that was true. I suggested that maybe she was thinking of a…

The 86-year-old didn’t play music as a child, but picked it up a little later in life. In 1959, after a stint in the Navy, he came to Danville, Virginia, and decided to take up music in his spare time.  “Old friends that I went to school with were plunkers. I wanted to be a…

“Banjer” Dan Mazer is originally from the Washington, D.C., area and grew up playing banjo in the manner of Earl Scruggs. He was mostly known as a solo artist, performing and busking around the area at local jams and venues. He relocated to California a number of years ago, and continues as a mostly acoustic…