Bluegrass recording news

You don't have to follow the music industry closely to encounter news reports about the continuing decline in sales of recorded music. Piracy, YouTube, video games, and a decline in the quality of popular music have all been offered to

Shannon Slaughter has been one of my favorite bluegrass guitarists since I first met him in the mid-1990s. At the time, he had just finished a stint with Lost & Found, and had joined Larry Stephenson's band. It was immediately obvious

We have lauded several times the efforts of Rebel and County Records in getting their deep back catalog into digital distribution. They have been recording bluegrass and old time music since the early 1960s, and have several hundred titles between

Fellow bluegrass blogger Ted Lehmann has published a lengthy and detailed review of Help My Brother, the new CD from The Gibson Brothers, due February 22 from Compass Records. Ted goes song-by-song through the album, and includes more than a dozen

March will be a big month for Rounder Records. They have new projects coming from Charlie Sizemore, Steve Martin, Sierra Hull... and Larry Sparks. Sparks, our current godfather of traditional bluegrass, is at the height of his career, enjoying later in

What a great album title! One Foot In The Honky Tonk is the name of the upcoming CD release from James Reams and the Barnstormers, due shortly on Reams' Mountain Redbird label. Though based now in the bluegrass mecca of Brooklyn

Sugar Hill will be releasing audiophile vinyl editions of their three Nickel Creek albums as part of the April 16 Record Store Day events. This includes their self-titled debut album, This Side, and Why Should The Fire Die each reissued

Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers have released one of the finest bluegrass Gospel records of the past few years. No surprise there, as Mullins has a long history of producing such, and is himself one of the finest tenor

It's been a while since we've heard from Larry Cordle, the brilliant songwriter who brought such classics as Highway 40 Blues and Murder On Music Row to wide audiences. Cord has been a bluegrass guy from the beginning, though, and it

We posted last week with news about In A Groove, the upcoming debut CD from Terry Baucom. It's hard to even comprehend describing a "debut" project for a 40 year veteran in the bluegrass music world. Terry got his start right