Articles

It’s a dreary January evening, but a quiet euphoria emanates from the four members of hard-driving all-female bluegrass group Della Mae. Earlier in the day, Kimber Ludiker, the group’s founder and a fifth-generation fiddle player, had laid eyes for the first time on the finished product of their new album, Magic Accident, on Compass Records….

Mandolinist and vocalist Jesse Appelman brings a wide world of musical inspirations and skills to his playing. He is joined by some of the West Coast’s finest musicians: Sami Braman on fiddle, Emily Mann playing bass, and Eli West on guitar. This core group is given some extra verve with guests like Alison de Groot,…

A Treasure of Southern West Virginia I live three doors down from Duffy, and on quiet mornings when I walk the dog past his house, I often hear him playing the sweetest banjo music. It drifts through the porch boards and out into the street, unhurried and warm, the kind of sound that makes you slow your…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1988, Volume 22, Number 7 The parking lot of a shopping center in Carney, Maryland, is neither the choice site to spend a damp Saturday afternoon nor the best place to interview an emerging force in bluegrass music. It doesn’t appear to be a great venue for the sparsely…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1977, Volume 11, Number 11 Northern Bluegrass — A Tangle of Roots and Contradictions The whole idea of Northern bluegrass sounds like a contradiction in terms. Bluegrass is the essence of the rural music of the traditional South. It seems impossible that Northerners, especially those from city and college…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine April 1987, Volume 21, Number 10 It’s 1963 in Washington Square Park, downtown Manhattan, on a Sunday afternoon. A young man of seventeen carrying a banjo case is inching his way forward through a crowded circle of bystanders toward its center where several bluegrass musicians are jamming near a fountain….