Articles

This celebrated duo is amazingly tight, seamless, self-contained and has just about everything going for it.  Ickes, of course, is one of the all-time masters of the Dobro and has spent decades as one of Nashville’s most in-demand session players. The co-founder and long-time member of Blue Highway garnered enough awards over the years—including a…

“Shiny Side Up,” the first song on the Dirty Grass Players new album of the same name, is less an opening track than it is a grand statement of purpose.  With its David Grisman-esque feel, the 10-minute exploration boldly announces the arrival of the Dirty Grass Players latest album, Shiny Side Up, with an energetic-explosion…

As the press material accompanying Mile Twelve’s third album explains, and as most listeners will agree, their music on their third album explodes and smolders with the urgency of trying to make up for lost time. The songs of this Boston-based “acoustic string band” (to use the band’s own description) makes no direct reference to…

Kathy Kallick’s newest release is all about connections: between Kathy and her mom; between Kathy and her daughters; between older and younger musical generations; and between folk, old-time, and bluegrass musical styles. It is a double-CD set with the first disc featuring Kathy and friends on new studio recordings and the second featuring her mom…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine October 1984, Volume 19, Number 4 Enon Baptist Church is located just a few miles from the Atlanta suburb of College Park on a winding stretch of highway known as Stonewall Tell Road. Across the road from the church is a cemetery, full of sculptured granite and marble monuments. One…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1978,  Volume 12, Number 7 The hills of North Carolina have been alive with the sound of music for hundreds of years. Some of the greatest musicians have their roots in these hills, with two of those being banjo player Earl Scruggs and guitarist Doc Watson. Ironically, I recently…