“… Sparta is small-town musical Tennessee with some big-name former residents, one of which, Lester Flatt, is one of the most influential proponents of the bluegrass sound he helped to pioneer. Present-day Sparta is grabbing this association with both hands and running with it, even going so far as to brand itself as ‘Bluegrass USA’, and who could blame it if doing so is going to attract the likes of bluegrass-lovin’ us.”
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“Probably no band of late better signifies the revolving door nature of a bluegrass ensemble than does Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver. With the recent announcement of banjo man Joe Dean’s departure from the band, hot on the heals of fiddler Stephen Burwell’s departure announcement last week and dobro ace Josh Swift’s in January, Doyle Lawson is probably frantically scouring Craigslist in a bid to find the latest Quicksilver members (not really; we’re pretty sure he has more appropriate and established channels as he has excelled in this aspect of bluegrass band HR since Quicksilver’s formation in 1979).”
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“At the risk of offending, Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen… is a Marmite band, an informal British-based term meaning in this case that you either like their line-muddying, boundary-pushing, refuses-to-be-pigeonholed brand of bluegrass or you don’t … however you class their take on the genre, the quartet, collectively the IBMA’s Instrumental Group of the Year in 2016 (they sing as well, by the way), let their instruments speak for themselves, and speak they do. I guess that’s why I hit record on my camera. Three times, for three choice morsels, you could say.”
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“Only a 9-year-old me would have the gumption to solicit Ricky’s attention mid-set during the Dublin leg of his 1985 European tour, his first tour as a bandleader at the height of his 1980’s country success and a tour that would spawn an album, ‘Live In London’, that would leave an indelible impression on me.”
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“The broadcast home of the Grand Ole Opry and ‘The Most Famed Country Music Station in The World’, 650AM WSM Radiowas founded by the now defunct National Life and Accident Insurance Company, who used the call sign WSM (We Shield Millions), and first broadcast on October 5 of 1925. We paid a visit to station’s ‘fishbowl’ studio in the bowels of Nashville’s mammoth Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, Eddie Stubbs spinning the discs as he did each weekday evening before his July 2020 retirement from both WSM and Grand Ole Opry announcer duties.”
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“Appaloosa, who, according to their website, are a ‘a group of seasoned musicians who play predominately original, contemporary and traditional Bluegrass music’, were formed in 2008 by Wayne Taylor after retiring from 21 years of service with Country Current, the US Navy’s renowned country-bluegrass ensemble. Wayne has shared a stage, and a song (‘Uncle Pen’ no less), with Bill Monroe (in 1995) and his two-decade-plus stretch with the Navy band, the last 9 of which were as band leader, saw him play for many a bigwig – heads of state, royalty and even 4 US presidents. But on this night, World Bluegrass Day 2019, he played for us, us and about 70 others in the Village Arts Centre in sleepy Kilworth, County Cork.”
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“The Sideline bluegrass sound from the stage of the Royal Theatre, Waterford, Ireland’s oldest continually operating performance venue. Wonderful stuff. Just wonderful.”
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“This 2019 iteration of the celebration of music that is the Shannonside Winter Music Festival had 80 events spread over 5 days covering 10 different musical genres… bluegrass was well catered for on the lineup, the Special Consensus, no strangers to the festival, the headline act. But until they rode into town for the established Sunday afternoon bluegrass concert, The Petersens and the Munich String Band ably held the keep…”
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“Pulling from their extensive catalogue of material, the 2-hour-long intermission-interrupted set contained many a highlight: the harmonies; the a cappella Gospel numbers; and the instrumentals, especially the bass solos (who doesn’t love a good bass solo or two?) & instrumental-heavy encore, were all outstanding, or just as one might expect from this polished quartet.”
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“Bluegrass Omagh. It’s probably the largest bluegrass festival on the island of Ireland and it has been running now for over a quarter of a century. The lineup for this year’s festival was just as impressive as the festival’s setting of the Ulster American Folk Park, the headline act of husband & wife combo Darin & Brooke Aldridge flown in just for the occasion. It was good to see and hear them again.”
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