Music Reviews

  • Harlan County – Natalie Tomlinson

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    Natalie Tomlinson is a young fiddler from southeastern Kentucky. For the last few years she has performed as a member of Sunrise Ridge, and just recently joined the cast of the Hatfield McCoy Dinner Feud in Pigeon Forge, TN. Her

  • Stress Dreams – Greensky Bluegrass

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    Confronted by the problems and perils brought on by the pandemic and all the other issues that they and everyone else have been forced to deal with recently, Greensky Bluegrass' aptly named opus, Stress Dreams, manages to find hope in

  • Borrowed Time – Joe Troop

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    Best known up until now as the banjo player and chief provocateur for the band Che Apalache, Joe Troop took heart with the arrival of 2021, thanks to the election of a new president and hope that a series of

  • Been A Long Time – Si Kahn

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    Si Kahn's sadly overlooked 1997 bluegrass classic, Been a Long Time, gets a reboot nearly 25 years after it was originally issued, a belated attempt to make up for that fact that it languished in obscurity due to the lack of

  • Dave’s Dozen – My 2021 Favorites

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    It’s time for the annual challenge: Picking my "dozen" favorite bluegrass recordings for the previous year. First, the usual cautions. This list is obviously very subjective, just one guy's opinion. The list represents my favorites, not necessarily the best. And it's

  • Better Late Than Never – Never Come Down

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    Based in Portland, Oregon, Never Come Down are an astute outfit that weave a multi-textured dimension to their grassicana motif. There's a great deal of depth to their approach, one that finds them blending the nominal instrumental elements of traditional

  • Restless Wanderer – R. Wesley Carr

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    There's something to be said for subtlety, even when it appears to substitute for flash and finesse. After all, it's often not a matter of how much music is thrown into the mix, but rather how it's applied. R. Wesley Carr