Articles

Veteran Tina Adair has a lovely voice with a bit of a teardrop in it.  After growing up in a family band, she launched her solo career at age 17 on Sugar Hill Records. She’s more or less stayed in the game since then. She spent a number of years as part of the Grammy-nominated…

How One Girl Ended up Down at the Bluegrass Crossroads (and got her soul back….) On the morning of Saturday, May 25 I had a rude awakening. My weather obsessed daughter made a 6 a.m. appearance at my bedroom door. I knew as soon as I saw her face that we would be having tornados for breakfast…

The Kentucky Colonels were as progressive and innovative as Billy Strings is today and Osborne Brothers were before them. The guitar magic—there’s no other word—conjured by Clarence White, melding with his older brother Roland’s dry, almost plaintive vocals and spot-on Monroe style mandolin, created a thrilling new sound. The highlight, to many fans was their…

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,…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine February 1989, Volume 23, Number 8 David “Dawg” Grisman is back in the bluegrass once again with a new two record album featuring the likes of Red Allen, Del McCoury, the Nashville Bluegrass Band, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, Herb Pedersen, Bobby Hicks, Tony Rice, Curly Seckler, J.D. Crowe, Sam Bush,…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine June 1983, Volume 17, Number 12  Ola Belle Reed has just completed a Sunday morning Gospel set with husband Bud and son David at the 1982 Brandywine Mountain Music Convention. She sits in the performer’s tent behind the stage resting, as her admiring fans come up to greet her and…