John had served as primary author and editor for The Bluegrass Blog from its launch in 2004 until being folded into Bluegrass Today in September of 2011. He continues in that capacity here, managing a strong team of columnists and correspondents.
Gena had established herself as a bluegrass pro long before Sister Sadie hit it big. From her home in North Carolina she spent time in a number of touring groups, from Petticoat Junction, New Vintage, Lou Reid & Carolina, and Alan Bibey & Grasstowne to The Daughters of Bluegrass and her own Gena Britt Band. People have admired her banjo picking and her singing voice from the 1990s to today.
This new release is a song called Take Your Circus on the Road, written by Connie Harrington and Don Pfrimmer, about a lady who has figured out that her romantic partner had been selling her a bill of goods, and she’s finally found the courage to send him packing.
Britt tells us that it came to her while she was filling in for Marc Pruett back in 2021.
“When I was traveling some with Balsam Range and we were talking about collaborating on some recorded material, Buddy [Melton] played me this song in a parking lot in Georgia between sets, and said he could hear me doing this tune. I love the fun aspect and creative songwriting of this tune. It struck a chord with me and I’m really proud of how the track turned out.”
Gena sings the lead and plays banjo supported by Milan Miller on guitar, Seth Taylor on mandolin, Aubrey Haynie on fiddle, and Buddy Melton on bass. Buddy and Milan sing harmony.
Despite the heartbroken theme, it really is a lovely song.
Have a listen…
Take Your Circus on the Road is available now from popular download and streaming services online, and to radio broadcasters via AirPlay Direct.
The big Pickin’ For A Purpose concert, scheduled for tomorrow night (January 11) to provide funding for hurricane disaster relief in Greene County, TN, has been rescheduled, postponed for one week because of the snow and ice storm bearing down on the region.
We have spoken with the concert promoter, who says that they have been able to retain the location at the Chuckey-Doak High School auditorium in Afton, TN for the 18th, and all but one of the booked bands are also able to perform next week.
Scheduled to appear are Blue Highway, Lonesome River Band, Tennessee Borderline, Red Camel Collective, and No Joke Jimmy’s. Springfield Exit, originally booked for tomorrow night, can’t make it next Saturday, but The Grascals are scheduled in their place.
Rather than an admission fee, attendees are requested to simply make a donation upon entry of whatever they can afford. Proceeds will go to AIDNET of Greene County, who are providing assistance with cleanup and rebuilding in east Tennessee from a base in Greeneville following the devastation that followed Hurricane Helene in September.
This is a rare opportunity to see so many fine bluegrass entertainers in one space during the winter months, while also helping out neighbors who suffered loss during the flooding.
Food and beverages will be available on site, along with auctions throughout the day, with those proceeds again going to hurricane relief efforts. Mark Ramsey of the Moonshiners television program will serve as MC.
AIDNET of Greene County can also accept direct donations online, and has an online form where homeowners can apply for help with their personal recovery needs.
Additional details about Pickin’ For A Purpose, now on January 18, can be obtained by calling or texting 423-823-1808.
Highly-regarded Boston banjo player Gabe Hirshfeld has launched a fundraiser on GoFundMe, asking for assistance as he navigates the costs and difficulties of an aggressive kidney disease, leading up to a transplant.
Gabe came to prominence nationally as a member of Boston’s Lonely Heartstring Band, now defunct, a very popular modern bluegrass group during the 2010s. Known for their lyrical and harmonic complexity within a bluegrass setting, the band released a pair of critically-acclaimed records but, like many groups formed during college, broke up when the members began to go their separate ways.
As the band members moved away, Gabe has stayed in the Boston area, his hometown, where he has remained active in bluegrass circles. He has also developed a following on YouTube for his video banjo lessons, and teaching at banjo camps.
During 2024 he began to experience an illness, quickly traced to kidney function. Gabe’s doctors determined that he had a misshapen “horseshoe” kidney on his right side, and no kidney on the left. With kidney function rapidly declining, Hirshfeld is fortunate in having already found a donor kidney from someone in the music community, and is preparing to undergo a transplant soon.
He says that he has had to overcome his hesitation to seek assistance, but with the associated uninsured costs of a transplant, especially the enforced three months off work in its aftermath, he finds he has no choice.
“I really hate to reach out for help financially like this, but I need to swallow my pride and remember that this illness is not my fault, and that there is no shame in needing help in times of struggle. The support of my community in lifting my spirits during this difficult time has already been overwhelming, and I hate to ask for more than just emotional support, but sadly, in today’s crazy world, one defective kidney = one GoFundMe campaign.”
Gabe Hirshfeld has long been recognized by his friends and fellow pickers as a kind and humble soul, just the sort that makes you want to reach out a hand when they are in need.
If you find yourself in a position to make a donation of any size to this appeal, you may do so online. GoFundMe accepts contributions via major credit cards, or by digital payments such as PayPal or Venmo.
Good luck, Gabe, on the transplant. Here’s to a full and rapid recovery!
Maine’s Breakin’ Strings has released a song with a theme familiar to anyone who lives along the US east coast. It’s another from their upcoming Homegrown album, which has been delayed due to some health issues.
It’s titled 95, for I-95, the longest north/south highway in the United States, which runs from Miami, Florida to the border with New Brunswick in Maine. Much of its route follows the old US-1, connecting major cities all along the way. A busy highway, especially near the metro areas, I-95 is all but unavoidable in parts of many states.
Written by the group’s two guitarists, Cliff Gelina and Cody Howe, 95 tells of events that have occurred for the band along this road, including a return from World of Bluegrass with a major storm on their heels.
Gelina sings lead, supported by Howe on lead guitar, guest Cory Walker on banjo, Sam Acus on mandolin, and Amanda Gelina on bass. David Bevins provides reso-guitar. The track drives it hard, with solid solos all around.
Give it a listen…
95 is available now from popular download and streaming services online. Radio programmers are invited to contact Breakin’ Strings online to obtain an airplay copy.
David Foster, a popular dentist practicing just south of Nashville, sold his successful practice to focus his attention on building banjos and mandolins, and doing custom inlay work. That may sound a bit like something concocted for one of Chris Jones’ fictional anecdotes, but it’s all true. Dr. Foster was approaching retirement age, and wanted to spend the rest of his fruitful days doing what he loved best.
And so we have the genesis of Things With Strings, a new web site to highlight the various services David offers, the instructional camps scheduled in 2025 for students of luthiery and inlay, and which will eventually showcase the handcrafted instruments he makes.
Though he required many years of training to obtain a DDS, David has been involved in bluegrass all that time, learning to play the banjo at 13 years of age. That passion remained while in college, and he tells us that he paid his way through school playing in a bluegrass band with his wife, Pam, on bass. In dental school in Memphis, they continued this practice, appearing often at The Lucy Opry.
It was at this point that luthiery first caught his eye, which David says happened by chance.
“There was a guy, Tommy Davis, who owned Memphis Rubber Stamp company, and built dobros, banjos, ukuleles… anything that you can imagine really. I told him I’d love to build a banjo, and he said, ‘My shop is two blocks from your school. Be at my shop Tuesday at 5:00 and we will get started.’
Long story short, I went there every spare minute during school. I carried him coffee or soda and built my first banjo.
He mentioned dentistry and inlay went hand in hand (it does), and I could focus on inlay.”
After establishing his practice, David Foster would use his vacation time to study with noted builders like Roger Siminoff or Dave Nichols, who does custom inlay for Martin. This past 20 years or so he has been doing custom inlay for individuals and builders, and making banjo conversion necks and mandolins, guitars, and ukuleles as his time allowed.
But a big change occurred about eight years ago when his long time friend Steve Huber, owner of Huber Banjos in nearby Hendersonville, appealed to David to take on all of Huber’s inlay work, as the guy who had been doing that was getting out of the business. That was the impetus to sell the practice, which he did in 2019, and transition to the life of a luthier.
This year Foster will share his expertise over two weeklong building and assembly workshops for banjo and mandolin, in which students will have all materials and tools provided, with expert instruction all the way through the process, so that they can leave after six days with a completed, professional grade instrument.
He is also offering two Introduction to Inlay workshops, and two Intermediate/Advanced Inlay camps where students bring in and execute a custom inlay that they design into an instrument over two days.
The camps are structured so that a beginner interested in developing these skills can start with the two inlay workshops, after which they should be ready for the assembly camps.
Full details on all these camps can be found on the Things With Strings web site.
Soon, you’ll be able to purchase Foster’s Tennessee Tornado banjo bridges in a variety of woods from the site as well, with instruments to follow in time.
Indiana bluegrass singer and songwriter Carl Bentley and his talented band have a new single on offer, a true story about a mine explosion 43 years ago in Carl’s native eastern Kentucky.
Carl says that accidents of any kind affect him deeply, as he was seriously injured himself in an auto crash in 1996 which required a full six months of recovery and rehab.
“On January 20, 1982, at approximately 9:40 a.m., a coal dust explosion occurred in the 001 section of RFH Coal Company’s No. 1 Mine, located at Mink Branch near Craynor, in Floyd County, Kentucky. All seven miners working underground at the time of the explosion were killed. I wrote this song in tribute to all miners who have perished underground.”
This song, the first from his next album, New Brand of Misery, was recorded with Carl on guitar and lead vocal, Josh Coffey on banjo, Jon Crouch on mandolin, and Caleb Garnett on bass. Josh and Caleb sing harmony, with fiddle provided by engineer and co-producer Ron Stewart.
As you might imagine, it’s something of a somber song, which Carl sings with the appropriate level of melancholy. It’s plenty lonesome.
Check it out…
Floyd County Mines is available now from popular download and streaming services online, and to radio programmers via AirPlay Direct.
South Carolina banjo man Todd Taylor has a new video, his rock ‘n’ roll five string version of the classic song, Ghost Riders in the Sky.
Todd has made a career for himself in this distinct stylistic niche, taking three-finger, roll-style banjo to rock music lovers with his arrangements of hit songs, and appearing with both rock and country acts on stage. His many collaborations with The Oak Ridge Boys have cemented his appeal with their massive fan base, as did his performances in years past on the Jerry Lewis telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Taylor suffers from a related disease, mitochondrial myopathy, and his appearances on the telethon both showed the world that people with muscular diseases could still accomplish much, and gave hope to the thousands of suffers of MD.
In that light, let’s talk about his most recent health concerns before checking out the new video.
Todd told us this afternoon that he has just received a diagnosis of colon cancer, following the extraction of a large polyp, with a treatment plan yet to be determined. But in typical Taylor fashion, he says that he’s not afraid, because he knows that God is with him, and feels that he will certainly beat this.
Given that his doctors found no spread of the cancer into his lymphatic system, Todd has good reason to be optimistic. He is likely to undergo a regimen of chemo and/or radiation therapy starting within the next few weeks, and at only 59 years of age, he says that he feels great. Prognosis in such cases is for better than 90% of patients recovering fully.
Todd asks that everyone pray for him, as he has seen the power of faith and prayer in his past brushes with mortality.
Now, let’s have a look at his take on Ghost Riders in the Sky.
Best of luck, Todd, as you go through treatment. We’re all praying for a happy outcome!
The 2020 project, directed by Kelley St. Germain, follows the life of Gilliam Banmon Grayson, who lived from 1887-1930, from his youth in eastern Kentucky until his death in an auto accident in his early 40s. He didn’t achieve notoriety until shortly before he died, but a number of the songs he is credited with writing have become staples in old time and bluegrass music.
Though some may have been based on existing folks songs, he is believed to have been responsible for or popularizing classics like Tom Dooley, Train 45, Handsome Molly, Short Life of Trouble, Going Down the Lee Highway, Omie Wise, Rose Conley, Banks of the Ohio, and Little Maggie.
St. Germain has placed the full 39 minute documentary on YouTube, where it can be viewed at no charge.
Short Life of Trouble won a number of film festival awards for its coverage of Grayson’s music and its impact, in interviews filmed with Ketch Secor, John McCutcheon, Ralph Stanley II, Kody Norris, Josh Beckworth, and a number of Grayson’s grandchildren.
Soulful bluegrass vocalist Greg Blake has a lovely new song to start this new year, a ballad about a West Virginia boy who misses those hills of home.
Bluefield Mountain Wind, written by Mark “Brink” Brinkman and David Stewart, unites Blake, a native West Virginian, with a pair of displaced Mountain Staters joining him on harmony vocals in Tim and Mollie O’Brien.
Greg makes his living these days as guitarist with Special Consensus, but continues to release music on his own. This latest extolls the beauty and tranquility of the mountainous region where western Virginia and West Virginia share a border. The song’s narrator recalls the happy time when he lived along that line, and asks that his body be brought there when he dies.
He recorded it with a group of Nashville superpickers: Andy Leftwich on guitar, mandolin, and fiddle; Scott Vestal on banjo; Josh Swift on reso-guitar; and Darin Vincent on bass.
Check it out…
Bluefield Mountain Wind is available now on Turnberry Records from popular download and streaming services online, and to radio programmers via AirPlay Direct and Get It Played.
This talented young group was originally noticed for their fiery instrumental abilities, but they are also adept songwriters and singers, as this latest single attests.
Mandolinist Teo Quayle says that he is fond of this, his first song.
“I’ll Be Here Either Way started as a hook which I had been messing around with for a while. That hook eventually became the chorus of the song. From there, I wrote each verse and the bridge around that central idea. Although the story of the song doesn’t pertain specifically to my life, its message is one to which many people can relate.
I’ll Be Here Either Way is special to me because it is the first song with lyrics that I’ve written.”
Support comes from Teo’s older brother Miles on fiddle, Ian Ly on guitar, and Andrew Osborn on bass. They turn in a fine, radio-friendly track, sure to appeal to the younger component of bluegrass lovers.
Have a listen…
I’ll Be Here Either Way is available now from popular download and streaming services online. Radio programmers can reach out to EMG for an airplay copy.
