Ralph Peer and the Making of Popular Roots Music by Barry Mazor (Chicago Review Press, 2014, 340 Pages, $13.49/28.96) is a must-read for anyone interested in the development and popularization of roots music, not only from the US but from Latin […]
Recently I was chatting with an up-and-coming bluegrass performer about her band. We began to talk about “traditional” bluegrass, and she noted that one of her biggest thrills was to be on the same stage with the Seldom Scene. When […]
Some people, maybe even many, think I’m something of a curmudgeon because I’ve often been slow to jump on the runaway train that heaps vast praise on young musicians playing in family bands or with other youth who appear to […]
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 […]
Earl Scruggs has long been lauded for the tone, taste, and timing of his banjo playing, and those same measures have been applied to bluegrass music as a whole. When bands exhibit strengths in developing and maintaining a tone, playing […]
We met our friend Brent Davis and his wife, Susan, for supper on Sunday afternoon in Columbus, OH, after a long drive from Pennsylvania. Irene spent a couple of hours helping to fold T-shirts as preparations for Musicians Against Childhood Cancer progressed, and […]
When Bob Dylan appeared with an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival, in July of 1965, he virtually stopped the folk revival of the 1950s and ‘60s in its tracks and awakened folkie youth culture to the joys of […]
Reading Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan & the Night that Split the Sixties (Dey Street/Harper-Collins Publishers, 2015) reproduces in wonderful, eye-opening detail the environment of the Newport Folk Festival during July of 1965, when Bob Dylan appeared onstage on […]
This is the 16th year for Musicians Against Childhood Cancer to run at Hoover-Y Park in Lochbourne, OH. In 2000, Mandy Adkins died of an aggressive brain stem tumor at the age of 19, after treatment at St. Jude Children’s […]
Bluegrass music and its derivatives are spreading the genre to a wider audience as fans become less genre specific. They seek out “good” music regardless of its origins and traditions. More than any other form I’m familiar with, bluegrass encourages […]
