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Bread and Butter
North Carolina born and raised fiddler Amy Kassir has a deep affection and powerful affinity for old-time fiddle music. Recently, she’s been a member of several California-based bands, which is where she now resides. On these nine-cut all-instrumental collection of old-timey music, she is joined by Carter Eddy (bass), Fred Levine (fiddle), Jake Eddy (guitar,…
Still Time To Dream
Originally from Massachusetts, Amy Clay studied to become a classically-trained violinist. However, after moving to the San Francisco Bay area, she began getting into other styles of playing, like country and bluegrass music. She played with area musicians and attended local jams, and a few years ago she started writing her own material about subjects…
Daggomit
Max Wareham, who’s spent the last several years in Peter Rowan’s band, really knows his way around the banjo, as his debut album attests. Rowan produced Daggomit, and contributes generously, with several cowrites with Wareham and two lead vocals. Though Wareham only sings on a couple of tracks, including “Hard Times Are Far Behind” (cowritten with…
Bill Clifton—Red Rector—Don Stover: The First Generation, A Bluegrass Experiment
By Dick Spottswood Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine August 1978, Volume 13, Number 2 Over thirty years ago an astute jazz promoter named Norman Granz had an idea. Big bands had dominated the jazz and pop scenes before World War II, producing much of the significant talent which emerged during the era. But between the…
The Old Mill Stream of Consciousness: John Hartford in the ‘90s
Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1995, Volume 29, Number 2 John Hartford keeps heading into the future by delving way back into the past. It’s not that Hartford stays lost in thoughts of by gone days; his busy career includes the recent release “The Walls We Bounce Off Of” on his Small Dog label,…
Buck White & The Downhomers
Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1973, Volume 7, Number 11 The sprawling, desolate Texas plains have never been the spawning ground of bluegrass talent that the Appalachians have. Involved for years with its own gift of genius to American music—Western Swing—Texas has made bluegrass music fight hard for a toehold out there, even today….