Twenty-eight years after it launched, the annual MerleFest, in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, is now halfway into another year. I arrived midday on Friday — day two of the event — just in time to catch Portland, Oregon-based old-time group Foghorn Stringband. […]
Jerry Douglas presents The Earls of Leicester performing at the 2016 Wingergrass Bluegrass Festival in Bellevue, Washington.
This week we begin doing something new. Well, two things. This will be my first column devoted exclusively to a music festival — Celtic Connections in Glasgow, Scotland — and the first time a single photographer, Carol Graham, is featured. […]
Celtic Connections 2016, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Genius has within it the seeds of its own destruction. Bill Monroe labored for years to find and develop a musical sound he heard in his head. He experimented throughout his sojourn in the industrial necklace around the Great Lakes […]
Special to the Wheeling Daily Register, Jan. 20, 1894: WILD E, W. Va., January 19. – John Hardy, for killing Thomas Drews, both colored, was hung at 2:09 p.m. to-day. Three thousand people witnessed his death. His neck was broken and […]
It has taken me quite a while to fully explore Gretchen Peters’ February 2015 release Blackbirds (Scarlet Letter Records). But patience is a virtue they say, as this album has been well worth the wait. The artistry is impeccable. The songwriting draws […]
IBMA World of Bluegrass, Raleigh, NC 10/3/2015
These days, joining organizations – especially trade organizations – isn’t necessarily the most popular activity in the world, so why am I taking time to write about a trade organization that holds a conference, meeting, award show, and showcase in […]
