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On January 6, 2024, Earl Eugene Scruggs, the most influential and imitated banjo picker on the planet, would have turned 100 years old. To celebrate the occasion, Jerry Douglas served as musical director and assembled some of the best and brightest pickers in bluegrass for a magical three-and-a-half hour show in the historic Ryman Auditorium…

Demigods don’t play the banjo. Scholars can point to a few lyre-playing immortals here and there in the pantheon, but that’s not picking the five-string, is it? And Earl Scruggs himself? Far too humble to make it in Valhalla. Yet some say there was a Buddha-like figure from the West, an ageless spirit with an…

And the Culture of Roots Music Throughout their career the Grateful Dead loaded their song repertoire with American roots music traditions from top to bottom. The Dead were interested in roots music largely because of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s (the Dead’s lyricist) early exposure to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. This anthology…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine June 1990, Volume 24, Number 12 One of the most cherished traditions in country and bluegrass music is that of the performing family group. In addition to numerous brother and sister acts we have had the Carter Family, the Pickard Family, the Phipps Family, the McLain Family, the Lewis Family,…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine August 2012, Volume 47, Number 2 It may sound like a setup for a really bad banjo joke, but five-strings can bring people together. And, in at least one case, help forge a bluegrass power couple. Terry Baucom has established himself among the great banjo pickers of the last four…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine March 1994, Volume 28, Number 9 [Portions reprinted with permission from The SEBA BREAKDOWN, Sept., 1992, Volume 9, No. 9] “It’s time to write a song. The ice on the river.  Is growing much thinner, and soon will give way. Way down below, the river still flows.  The song never…