Articles

Although Sally Jones is fairly ubiquitous in the world of bluegrass music, this album travels a little off the beaten path. These recordings start in the earlier years of Sally Jones’s transatlantic tour with the Sidewinders, featuring Kristin Scott Benson on banjo, Mickey Harris on bass, and Brad Meinerding on mandolin. The rest of the…

Songwriter & So Much More North Carolina-born and raised, Jim Lauderdale has devoted his life to music. Not only is he a singer, he is a prolific songwriter. For his eleventh bluegrass album, he collaborated with the Po’ Ramblin’ Boys. The Long and Lonesome Letting Go (2023) features twelve powerful bluegrass tunes that Jim Lauderdale co-wrote…

By Rhonda Vincent and Terry Herd “Kentucky Borderline,” written by Rhonda Vincent and Terry Herd, was first released in 2003 on Vincent’s One Step Ahead (Rounder). In January 2004, it hit #1 on Bluegrass Unlimited National Bluegrass Survey and later that year was named “Song of the Year” by the International Bluegrass Music Association.  The…

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…

Fifty-Seven Years on Stage and Still Going Strong When a writer for the Wall Street Journal reviewed Rhonda Vincent’s first Rounder release, Back Home Again (2000), proclaiming Vincent to be the “New Queen of Bluegrass,” that reviewer could not have predicted how long the “new” queen’s reign would last.  The music industry tends to be…

Dives Into No Fear You might think it would send shivers down the spine of a teenaged Maddie Dalton joining one of bluegrass music’s hottest acts, Sister Sadie, and that’s exactly what it did. On top of auditioning for the 3-time IBMA “Vocal Group of the Year” and making her Grand Ole Opry debut on…