On her new album, TREES, Laurie Lewis invites listeners to join her on a ramble through the natural world as she experiences both loss and joy. This project is her first without the mandolin accompaniment of long-time collaborator and partner […]
Wide Open Jam, World of Bluegrass, 9/29/2018
If it is October, it’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass time at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Once again readers of this column will be able to experience, up close and personal, that autumnal gathering via the photos and words of Peter Dervin, […]
While watching this year’s RockyGrass Festival, I thought of one of my favorite quotes from the American designer Charles Eames: “The details are not the details. They make the product.” This is a simple yet profound statement. A great book […]
I first met Kay Clements back in the 1990s at the Strawberry Music Festival and we became fast friends, bonded by a passion for music and radio. Bill Frater: Where and when did you start in radio, and what were […]
When bluegrass legend Laurie Lewis stepped to the mic to address her hometown audience before launching into her annual Thanksgiving weekend show, her voice was lower than expected. Lewis and The Rights Hands — her crackerjack band of bluegrass masters […]
I noticed as I was writing a preview for the Strawberry Park Bluegrass Festival, which we’re going to attend in Connecticut in two weeks, that their Friday lineup features four bands who are fronted by and/or dominated by women. Furthermore, […]
It wasn’t long ago that bluegrass purists frowned on the idea of a woman playing bluegrass. That notion has slowly faded, and Laurie Lewis has a great deal to do with it. Although she’s known as a top-notch vocalist (she’s […]
