Tag Archives: Bluegrass music

Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys’ The Complete Jessup Recordings Plus! Featuring Ricky Skaggs & Keith Whitley

What a treat this collection is. Real Gone Music has re-released on two CDs three obscure LPs from the early 1970s when Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs first joined Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys. The titles originally were … Continue reading

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Kathy Kallick Band’s Foxhounds

Bluegrass doesn’t get more solid than the music on this, Kathy Kallick’s 20th album. Kallick herself is an institution in bluegrass, not only through her work with this band but as a founding member of the Good Ol’ Persons, plus … Continue reading

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Laurie Lewis & Kathy Kallick’s Laurie & Kathy Sing the Songs of Vern & Ray

Laurie Lewis has been leaning more toward contemporary folk music lately, as witnessed in her 2013 live recording One Night in May. So I was probably expecting something along those lines when I hit “play” on this new disc. Imagine … Continue reading

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Various artists’ Moody Bluegrass Two … Much Love

Moody Bluegrass Two … Much Love is a followup to the Grammy nominated 2004 Moody Bluegrass. I haven’t heard the original release, but I suspect this one is much the same, and fans of the first should find much to … Continue reading

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Andy Statman’s Old Brooklyn

My introduction to Andy Statman is intimately associated with my introduction to Brooklyn. On the first night of my first visit to New York, visiting a friend who was living in Brooklyn in 2002, I attended a jazz clarinet performance … Continue reading

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Various artists’ Goodbye Babylon

Crossroads. Everybody knows the story about Robert Johnson at the crossroads, selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for the ability to play guitar like a fiend. But the real crossroads in American music is gospel. Gospel music is … Continue reading

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The Avett Brothers’ Mignonette

The Avett Brothers join acts like Gillian Welch, Old Crow Medicine Show and the Legendary Shack Shakers to bring a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility to Southern stringband music. The Avetts draw on the Piedmont blues, bluegrass and country of their … Continue reading

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Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer’s Music For Two and Obstinato

Banjo vertuoso Béla Fleck, having already pioneered and deeply explored the intersections of bluegrass, jazz and pop in a 20-year recording career, in 2001 recorded a double Grammy winning disc of “classical” music, Perpetual Motion. It leaned heavily to Baroque … Continue reading

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The Gibson Brothers’ Bona Fide

The Gibson Brothers, Eric and Leigh, hail from upstate New York, and they play a brand of bluegrass that’s influenced by New England folk music as much as by Appalachian string bands. They have top-notch picking (Leigh on guitar, Eric … Continue reading

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Vassar Clements’ Full Circle

Vassar Clements was the first fiddle player whose playing I fell in love with. I’ve always just naturally gravitated to the guitar, but Vassar’s playing on the legendary Will the Circle Be Unbroken album made me sit up and pay … Continue reading

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