Articles

Although the title of this album suggests departure, when you start listening it feels like you’re arriving at a family cookout. The musicians are the well-seasoned burgers, brats and brisket and the notes of their instruments are flowing like cousin Joe’s famous apple wine. The songs are all the comfort food fixin’s you love, speaking…

Originally from New York, Alex Graf picked up the guitar at the age of twelve and over the following years had immersed himself studying jazz by such greats as John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker. Moving to Colorado in 2017, he discovered there was also a home for him in bluegrass music, becoming influenced…

Seven-time national fiddle champion, Grammy nominated recording artist, teacher, singer, touring musician, and flatfooter, Megan Lynch Chowning, hasn’t forgotten the challenges facing a newcomer and transitioning fiddle student. This teacher has true talent in recalling the apprehension and desire newer fiddlers have on where to start, how to learn particular songs and practical ideas on…

East Kentucky-born Carl Bentley grew up singing in church in and around his hometown of McDowell. At age 10, he was given a Ralph Stanley album featuring Keith Whitley by his father, who was also a musician.  That was all it took. To this day, Bentley still wears the Stanley-Whitley influence, and wears it well….

Vibrant Branches Sprout From Deep Roots Married partners Natalya Zoe Weinstein and John Cloyd Miller are living proof that music brings people from vastly different backgrounds and geographical regions together, and that the result can be an amazingly rich creative collaboration.  Natalya grew up in the college town of Amherst, Massachusetts, with a violinist mother and…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine November 1982, Volume 17, Number 5 Norman Blake is as close to being a “star” as a musician can get in the field of old-time acoustic music. With the aid of a single-minded sense of where he wanted his music to go; and of dedicated hard work that would satisfy…