Articles

The Heartbeat of Golden Highway There is no doubt that Molly Tuttle is extremely talented.  This Grammy-winning artist has continually displayed the ability to write songs, sing and play lead and rhythm guitar with the best that bluegrass music has ever produced.  But, typically, those who reach the mountain’s peak are blessed with others who…

The Doctor Is In To say that there are a lot of people providing guitar instruction on YouTube is an understatement…there are thousands…maybe tens of thousands.  Refine your search to bluegrass and fiddle tunes and the numbers drop, but there are still hundreds.  Refine the search again to look for someone who has taught bluegrass…

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…

Bands Blurring the Lines of Bluegrass “The cool thing about Broke Mountain Bluegrass Band is we thought we were something special,” says Anders Beck with a laugh, “but we were just five dumb kids.  Only time can tell if we were right or not.  I guess we were something pretty special though, because the bands…

We all have days when we could use a good-humored song with a classic feel. If that’s you today, I recommend “End of the End of the World,” written by Adam Wright, which fits that bill with playful perfection. As the title suggests, it takes a run-of-the-mill phrase, end of the world, and gives it…

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…