Articles

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,…

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…

At age 16, Mei Lin Heirendt, lead singer and fiddler with this northern California-based quartet, is already a veteran of sorts. She started playing the violin at age 7, and has simply never stopped.  Since she was a child, she’s been involved with and nurtured by the California Bluegrass Association and is currently the organization’s…

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…

Jason Keiser is a wizard in the bluegrass-jazz (or “space grass”) guitar tradition of Tony Rice and John Carlini, both formerly of the David Grisman Quintet. Keiser has, in fact, studied under many of the masters, including Carlini, Wyatt Rice and mandolin maestro Adam Steffey. On this dazzling, all-acoustic, instrumental collection, Keiser pays tribute to…

The “Pickin’ On” series has been running for nearly three decades now, cranking out over forty records. They have successfully bridged the gap between traditional bluegrass and popular music of the 20th and 21st century. The series first began to captivate bluegrass audiences with the Pickin’ on the Grateful Dead album in 1997 and went…