Current Issue
June 2022

The Tradition

Advertisement for a 1949 baseball game and musical performance by Bill Monroe in Damascus, Virginia.

Notes & Queries – June 2022

By Gary Reid

More For the Good People In response to a piece in the April 2022 issue concerning the location of a church on the cover of a Stanley Brothers album, Vermonter…

Read More
The Golden State Boys with Rex Allen, Sr. at the Town Hall Party show in 1961 (left to right) Walter Poindexter, Herb Rice, Rex Allen, Sr., Hal Poindexter, and Leon Poindexter.

Early Los Angeles Bluegrass

By Jon Hartley Fox

Golden State Boys Blue Diamond Boys The Hillmen In 1954, Herb Rice and his wife Louise Poindexter packed up their three sons—Larry, Tony and Ron (in utero)—and left Danville, Virginia,…

Read More
The Roland White All-Stars at the Freight & Salvage, Berkley, California in February of 2012 (left to right) Laurie Lewis, Patrick Sauber, Roland White, Bill Amatneek, and Keith Little. // Photo by Mike Melnyk

Roland  White

By Bill Amatneek

Roland White passed away on April 1, 2022, at age 83. All who knew him remember the standup guy he was—a warm, welcoming, humble, generous man of wide smile and…

Read More

The Artists

Butch Waller // Photo by snap jackson

A Half-Century of High Country with Butch Waller

By Jon Hartley Fox

There aren’t many people who have led a working bluegrass band for 50 years. Bill Monroe did it, with his Blue Grass Boys. Mac Martin did it in Pittsburgh, with…

Read More
AJ Lee and Blue Summit – (left to right) Sullivan Tuttle, Scott Gates, AJ Lee, Chad Bowen, Jan Purat.

AJ Lee: Back to Bluegrass

By Dan Miller

 “We started out right/Pickin’ in the pines/It’s a music that stays in your soul.”   Although AJ Lee is currently only twenty-four years old, she has been turning heads at…

Read More

Herb Pedersen

By Jon Hartley Fox

California Bluegrass Pioneer Herb Pedersen’s life was utterly transformed—in the blink of an eye—in a record store on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California. There he was, a fresh-faced, guitar-playing teenager…

Read More

Chris Hillman

By Richard D. Smith

Bluegrass Blessings & Music Milestones Photo by Lori Stoll As agreed, the two mandolin players met up at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. They opened their instrument cases and…

Read More

The Sound

Wait A Minute

By Casey L. Penn

An instant classic for The Seldom Scene and widely recorded by artists across many genres, “Wait A Minute” was written in 1972 by Herb Pedersen, who at just 20 years…

Read More
Eric Skye with his Santa Cruz 00-Skye. // Photo by Andrea Corrona Jenkins

Santa Cruz Guitar  Company Turns 45

By David McCarty

With A Lot of Help from Its Friends Shaken by tragic personal loss and global economic turmoil, the Santa Cruz Guitar Company and its founder, legendary luthier Richard Hoover, have…

Read More

The Venue

Molly Tuttle, AJ Lee, and Angelica Grim perform as part of the Kids On Bluegrass program at the CBA Father’s Day Festival

The California Bluegrass Association

By Dan Miller

Promoting Bluegrass Music in The Golden State for Nearly Fifty Years California is a long way from the heartland of bluegrass music, however, the California Bluegrass Association (CBA) represents the…

Read More