(for KDHX) I’m just going to come right out and say it: I love everything about this album. The only way to make it any better would be to have it autographed. The art, the concept, the musicians, the arrangements, the production—in any way you care to look at it, Noam Pikelny’s latest release, Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe is a delight from start to finish.
The first thing that I love is that, on the face of things, the concept is so unabashedly geeky: It’s a track-for-track, in sequence recreation of one of the most respected recordings in bluegrass music, one that Kenny Baker released in 1976. It’s right up there, in terms of cool, with Civil War re-enactment and stamp collecting. For the cover, Pikelny is wearing a Baker-era suit, tie (yikes!) and the same brand and style of Stetson that you see on the initial release.
The risk, perhaps, it that it could come off as mockery, though he negotiates that line carefully and we see the impulse for what it is: respect. Baker had been a long-time fiddler with Monroe, and spent longer playing in that band than any other musician. He was a master of phrasing and interpretation, and also such a Monroe die-hard such that when he went to make a solo recording, he did a collection of Monroe’s songs. Famously, Bill Monroe came by the studio for little more than to say hi and ended up staying throughout the sessions, and playing on every track.
That album, rightly, is prised for the approach that Baker brought to the music, though the subtleties can be hard for those less steeped in the music to hear. At the time, Baker’s playing stood out from the crowd for its polished feel and the elegance that it added to the music. It became a classic recording, a status that it retains to this day.
The concept of recreating it began, as is noted in the liner notes, when Pikelny joked in a text to Ronnie McCoury “Could I get away with calling an album Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe?” The idea stewed a bit and, a year later, he decided that it actually was a very attractive one. Pikelny spent months transcribing Baker’s solos in order to bring them faithfully to the banjo. Why? Well, maybe it was fun, or whatever, but he did it, perhaps to work through the interpretations of a master with the intention of learning from them as much as building on them.
Once done, Pikelny brought together some musical friends that are all operating at the very top of their instruments: Mike Bub on bass, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Ronnie McCoury on mandolin, and Bryan Sutton on guitar. All share a deep, abiding sense of the tradition of bluegrass music, yet all project their own personalities and their own voices through the music they play. Each is a delight on his own, and together they could play “Happy Birthday” and no doubt it would be absolutely entertaining. They are just that good. The album was produced by another great, fiddler Gabe Witcher, and the only regret is that we don’t get to hear him on here too.
The result is an album that is simply impossible to resist. It includes some very common bluegrass tracks, such as “Jerusalem Ridge,” and “Brown County Breakdown” as well as some pieces that are somewhat less heard theses days, such as “Road to Columbus.” The recording quality is crystalline, and while there is a dedication to what Baker and Monroe brought to this music, the voices of these players come through as well and there are a wealth of “ahh!” moments. McCoury is such a deft student of Monroe, though he doesn’t parrot the playing, instead using it as a means to explore new musical ideas. Stuart Duncan , well, there is no better or humble player out there today.
I could go on, but I won’t. It just doesn’t get any better than this. If you are a fan of acoustic music, and have a CD player in your car, get a copy of this album. If it doesn’t win a Grammy, then those awards aren’t worth a 70s-era tie.
Today we call the kind of music that Rhys Jones, Jeff Miller, and Jim Nelson play “old-time music,” though that wasn’t always ever thus. Prior to the 1920s, it was just called music, and it came to America with the English, Scottish, Irish, and German settlers. In the US the music naturally kept growing, changing, and evolving, creating a number of variant styles throughout Appalachia. In time, musical styles throughout the eastern United States were as unique and clustered as English accents are even today. You could tell, within a few miles at times, where a player was from just by hearing them play.
For most people looking down the barrel of retirement, the thought of having another baby isn’t one they’re willing to entertain. Yet when Steve Heming said “I do” three years ago, he also said “I will.” For wife Tammy, having kids was always in the cards. Sure enough, nine months later, Steve welcomed his third child, Lucy, into the world. Then a year later, Thomas arrived. Steve is 58. This past year, while Steve was home changing diapers and singing lullabies, his eldest son, Shawn, 26, was a tree planting foreman in B.C., and his daughter, Kerry, 24, was a concierge at a yoga studio in Toronto. 
Steve Colbert once said that stay-at- home dads are “against nature’s laws.” Your grandmother probably thinks that, too.
Dick Bowden recently wrote a compelling cover story about the Spinney Brothers for Bluegrass Unlimited. Titled “On the road with the Spinney Brothers” (April, 2013) Bowden gives an account of one leg of the Spinney Brothers’ summer 2012 tour, following the band from the moment they leave the Bluegrass in the Hills festival in Hopedale, Ohio, on Friday to the moment they leave their next gig, Saturday/Sunday sets gig at the Podunk Bluegrass Festival near Norwich, Connecticut. 
There is a novelty to being a family band, just as there is a novelty to being very young yet sounding like someone who has been playing for decades. There was a time when the Snyder Family Band was both of those things 
At times, Peter Rowan seems like the Zelig of roots music. In the course of his long career, Rowan has been a bluegrass boy, a new-age Buddhist mystic and truly everything in between.
here are lots of tribute albums around, though they are a curious bird. The assumption we make as consumers is that the people who contribute do so because they were inspired by the person whose work they are paying tribute to. I once bought a tribute CD to Jimmy Rogers that opened with a track from U2, “Dreaming with Tears in My Eyes.” It was hard to imagine that U2 had ever heard of Jimmy Rodgers, and even harder to imagine that they had been influenced by him.
Greg Cahill is, in so many ways, the embodiment of bluegrass music: honest, friendly, and in it not because he wants to be, necessarily, but because he has to be. I was fortunate to reach him at his home on a day that he was, as he says, unpacking his suitcase, doing the laundry, and packing it all in again in order to head back out on the road. Through it all, he tries to be an ambassador for the music and, frankly, you couldn’t find a better one. 
One reviewer noted of Audie Blaylock that he “puts music before image.” If you’ve seen the cover of his latest album, Hard Country, you’ll see some of the truth of that statement: this is one of the best albums of 2012, and it has one of the worst album covers.
Whenever I approach the music of Jim Lauderdale I find myself reconsidering that question that we’ve all mulled over at one time or anther: Just what is bluegrass, anyway?
It’s pretty much impossible to discuss John Driskell Hopkins without discussing Zac Brown, and there are a number of reasons for that. Brown, though still young, is one of those people who has more energy than any single person rightfully should—he’s a Grammy winner, he’s run a restaurant, tours incessantly, is a father of four. He’s also the founder of the label Southern Ground, which he runs as a stable of talent. Those signed to the label, which includes Hopkins, are virtually indistinguishable from the Zac Brown band. They tour together, and Brown’s shows can feel more like a label sampler than a concert. Everyone gets a chance at the mic, and keeping them all straight can be a job. I saw their show at Merlefest last year, and it felt like an extended advertisement for Southern Ground records.
Tender Is the Night is the fifth solo collection from Old Man (Chris) Luedecke, and it feels like some of the musical ideas he’s been working with are really beginning to gel. His writing has always been very strong, remaining true to the roots of American folk and country music, though dealing with modern themes and ideas.
In 2000 Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott released “Real Time,” a gorgeous album of duets by two complete masters of instrumentation, arrangement, and performance. Beautiful. Then they toured it, and pretty much immediately demonstrated that there was a dimension to their playing that the recording lacked; it was a studio piece, and didn’t entirely capture the energy, spontaneity, camaraderie and humour that both O’Brien and Scott share. In a live setting, the pairing of these two performers—who can be absolutely commanding of an audience on their own—was pure unadorned fireworks.
In Scott’s world, it’s not that he’s all over the map, but rather it’s just a very big map. In the end, as he discussed with me on the phone from his home in Nashville, whatever it is that he’s doing or wherever he is, it’s all music.
While “The Hills of Alabam” is a new release, the material all dates from the early 1980s or thereabouts—it’s a compilation of material from two Front Porch String Band albums (the only ones that were ever released) with the one exception being “The Day that Lester Died” which comes from Mark Newton’s album “Follow Me Back to the Fold.” 
k it’s probably safe to say that this album won’t appear on many year-end best of 2012 lists this year, likely because it’s really a kind of teaching tool: a presentation of the pieces that O’Connor included in his fiddle method books. O’Connor is interested in building a sound fiddle teaching method based in the cadences and tunes of American music, and this album is ancillary to that project. And, yes, there are pieces like “Rubber Dolly Rag” that perhaps don’t bear repeated listening for those without an interest in the curriculum. Nevertheless, there are other pieces that are breathtaking, such as, believe it or not, “Old Folks at Home.” 
hings we desire in the fall—the movies we want to watch, the soups we want to cook, the music we want to hear—are expressions, I think, of what we want the fall to be. For me, if summer is the colouring outside the lines of the Grateful Dead—what I think of as quintessentially summer music—fall ushers in a need for the familiar, the organized and the small. Summer music is expansive; autumn music is chamber music, closed-in and close.
First the music: David Gunning is very much a songwriter of the Canadian Maritimes, and in this release he revisits so many of the themes we commonly see from that part of the world. In “Living in Alberta” we hear about the displacement of the young people to travel west to look for work. “A Game Goin’ On” is another anthem to the joys of hockey. Hard work, hard times and coal are the themes of “Coal from the Train.” Also here is homesteading (The Family Name) rootlessness (“All Along the Way” and “Too Soon to Turn Back”) the Lone Musician (“The Weight of My Guitar”). 
writes, it would appear, because of a desire to say something and to engage her listener. That’s uncommon in the world of popular music, which is one of the reasons that it is has been so distinct from the other arts, such as painting, sculpture, dance, writing. Popular music for a large part of the 20th century was about commerce; “good albums” were the ones that sold. Getting signed was an end to itself — as brilliantly skewered in the Cameron Crowe movie “Almost Famous” — not the desire to say something, or affect listeners, or to turn over ideas. 
In 2006 he released the glorious “Leave the Light On,” with a title track that feels like an instant classic (though, in a real head-scratcher, Rolling Stone chose another track, “Diplomacy,” for their list of top 100 songs of the year). Smither has got star quality, magnetic presence, A-list chops, and can write songs like, well, “Leave the Light On.” Again, it’s one of those songs that simply should have a larger life than it does. 
