Travelin' McCourys and Jeff Austin Band play the Grateful Dead's Fire on the Mountain - photo by David Russell Before the Grateful Dead pioneered psychedelic rock music, Jerry Garcia played bluegrass. One of Garcia’s first gigs in the early 1960’s was playing
If I were a casting director looking for someone to play a mad scientist, Ned Luberecki would be my guy. I can picture him in a white lab coat, huddled over an experiment, with an evil grin and a devious
Small Town Heroes is something of a departure for Tennessee-based Valerie Smith. It's the first album with the latest iteration of her touring band, Liberty Pike, and was recorded away from home at Tom Mindte's studio in Rockville, MD. The reason
This review of Join The Jam is a contribution from Deanie Richardson, fiddler with Sister Sadie, and prominent session player and instructor in Nashville. She has recorded and performed with top country artists and bluegrass acts alike, and has very
Family bands are a staple of bluegrass music, particularly when it comes to Gospel groups. For some of these bands, music is a hobby – a way for the family to spend time together, share their beliefs, and have fun
It’s been a few years since we’ve heard from Wildfire, the group that got its start in 2000 as the house bluegrass band at Dollywood. Since then, they’ve released a handful of albums, scored several hits with songs like Rough
The Darrell Webb Band has become a performing tour de force in the past several years, serving as a house band of sorts at the popular Old Smoky Moonshine distilleries in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, as well as keeping
When a Danny Barnes album shows up in the mail, you have no idea what to expect. His creativity and musical adventures have kept him from being pigeonholed into any specific genre or style. So as you open his new
Perhaps the surest sign that bluegrass has grown to a mature musical form is the fact that it has now segmented itself into a number of subsets. Each has its own dedicated following, with artists catering to the style, labels
The Joe Val Bluegrass Festival is definitely one of the main events of the bluegrass calendar for pickers, students, and fans of bluegrass anywhere in the northeast region of the US. Folks come in from all over to see favorite
