Articles

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1979, Volume 13, Number 8 It was spring in the Appalachian mountains. The sun was bright and the air was cool. White dogwood trees were in bloom throughout Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Mountain laurel covered the ground. The foliage was so breath-taking it was hard to imagine that it…

By Doc Hamilton and Dick Spottswood Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1978, Volume 12, Number 8 It is with a great deal of sorrow that we note the passing of Paul Warren in the early morning hours of January 12th at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. Paul had been a patient in the hospital…

Hartford is 24 Years Gone, Yet His Music and Personality Still Influences New Generations I got to know John Hartford a little bit through the sheer luck of geography.  As a native of Huntington, West Virginia, located on the banks of the mighty Ohio River, my family would eventually move to Cincinnati when I was…

Songwriter Byron Hill is originally from the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina but settled in Nashville in 1978 where he had been pitching his songs since 1976. Since then, his songs have been picked up and recorded by a long list of both bluegrass and country artists to include Special Consensus, Lonesome River Band, Seldom…

A former IBMA Momentum Instrumentalist of the year and national mandolin champion, Thomas Cassell has performed with everyone from Billy Strings and Jim Lauderdale to Missy Raines, Becky Buller and Bryan Sutton. His latest album, and follow-up to his 2028 instrumental collection Voyager reveals Cassell’s  impressive talents as both a singer and lyricist.  There’s a…

Tim Stafford’s and Thomm Jutz’s sophomore album is kind of like a songwriting class on CD. They really show how it’s done. Jutz, a prolific writer and former IBMA Songwriter of the Year, does in fact lecture on songwriting at Nashville’s Belmont University. Stafford, also a an IBMA Songwriter of the Year, is a former…