All posts tagged: Bluegrass Music

Pokey laps the field at Day I of Red Wing II

Published by

The second annual Red Wing Roots Music Festival in spectacular Natural Chimneys Park began on Friday afternoon under a beautiful summer sky.  The promise of the inaugural festival – hosted by the Steel Wheels – brought out an even larger crowd this year.  And for the most part the music didn’t disappoint. My friend Oakley Pearson and I arrived in time to catch the full set of Furnace Mountain, a band from the Berryville, Virginia, area.  Comprised of Aimee Curl on bass and vocals, Danny Knicely on mandolin and fiddle, Dave Van Deventer on fiddle, and Morgan Morrison on bouzouki, guitar and vocals, Furnace Mountain is a first-rate roots music band.  Knicely is an especially inventive mandolin player, and he displayed some great chops and songwriting skills in today’s set. Caravan of Thieves was a band I wasn’t familiar with, but they grew on me very quickly.  Their web site has a catchy – yet pretty accurate – description of this group:: Driving gypsy jazz rhythms, acoustic guitars, upright bass and violin lay the foundation for …

Frank Solivan at Cedar Lane

Frank Solivan stirs the pot

Published by

If you had to be inside on a drop dead gorgeous Sunday afternoon in Washington, I couldn’t imagine a better place than sitting in the sun-drenched hall of Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church listening to the incredible musicianship of Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen. The Dirty Kitchen Band is on a roll.  Besides making the More to Come… Best of Bluegrass 2013 list (a high honor indeed!), banjoist Mike Munford is the 2013 International Bluegrass Music Association (IMBA) Banjo player of the year, while guitarist Christ Luquette is the IBMA Instrumentalist of the Year Momentum Award winner.  Bluegrass Today said that with their second release (On the Edge), “Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen could now be reaching the kind of name recognition that puts them into any conversation about the elite contemporary bands.”  And what other band is fronted by a chef who will whip up a special meal for you prior to the concert (and hence the name). Their two-hour show as part of the Concerts at Cedar Lane series showcased tunes old and …

Nikckel Creek Reunion Tour in Charlottesville

Haven’t missed a beat

Published by

Seven years after their “Farewell for Now” tour in 2007, Nickel Creek – the precocious bluegrass child prodigies who’ve grown into some of the best progressive string band musicians of this or any generation – reunited this year for their 25th anniversary tour. You may ask how a band with players in their early-to-mid-30s has a 25th anniversary tour.  Well, mandolin mad man Chris Thile was nine when the band first formed, and neither of the Watkins siblings were teenagers back in 1989. It doesn’t really matter.  I’m just glad they’ve come back together for this tour.  And I was thrilled to see this group of talented musicians – anchored by veteran bass player Mark Schatz – last evening in Charlottesville. I was at the downtown mall pavilion for the 2007 farewell tour…and I was at the same place for the reunion last evening.  If you don’t believe me, I have the t-shirts to prove it! In addition to the reunion tour, Thile, fiddler Sara Watkins, guitarist Sean Watkins, and Schatz released a new CD …

Claire Lynch Band at home at IMT

Published by

Monday evening’s Institute of Musical Traditions show at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church had the feeling of a “living room concert” as founder and emcee David Eisner put it. The Claire Lynch Band – in what has become an annual tradition – put on a  musically adventurous yet still familiar and engaging show for a full house of family and appreciative fans. The 2 1/2 hour concert had all the elements of a Claire Lynch show:  great singing by Claire and the band, sick guitar work from Matt Wingate, jazzy fiddle from Bryan McDowell, and lots of fantastic bass from the incomparable Mark Schatz. There were a number of swing tunes, which fit Claire’s voice to a T, tossed in with the bluegrass and folk.  While performing songs from her most recent CD, the first-rate Dear Sister, Claire also reached back into her catalog, especially including tunes from the Watcha Gonna Do CD from 2009.  The Mockingbird’s Voice and Barbed Wire Boys were two standouts among many. There’s so much to like in Claire’s work these …

Happy Birthday, Del McCoury

Published by

Happy 75th Birthday to Del McCoury, one of the finest voices in traditional bluegrass music. A winner of the National Heritage Fellowship lifetime achievement award and a member of the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, McCoury – at 75-years young – doesn’t rest on his laurels.  Just last Sunday the Del McCoury Band won a Grammy for The Streets of Baltimore and he continues to find new avenues to showcase his talent and new collaborators for his music. Vince Gill has said “I’d rather hear Del McCoury sing ‘Are You Teasing Me’ than just about anything.” It just so happens there’s a terrific “early morning” video version of a very casual Del McCoury Band performing Are You Teasing Me? posted by radio station WNCW.  For a group that generally appears on stage in the traditional suits and ties of the classic days of bluegrass, it is kind of fun seeing the McCoury boys in shorts (with Rob in flip-flops) and Del in his jeans. Are You Teasing Me? Me, I’d rather hear Del sing 1952 …

For the Love of the Music

Published by

The last time I heard John Jorgenson play, it was this past summer under a beautiful Shenandoah Valley sky, where his quintet awed us all with a dazzling set of gypsy jazz. Tonight, Jorgenson was back – this time at the Institute of Musical Traditions – playing a dazzling set of bluegrass. And all this from one of the great Telecaster masters of his generation, who once spent six years on the road with Elton John.  It boggles the mind to think one man can switch so effortlessly between technically difficult genres and still make great music. Thank God Sir Elton paid him the big bucks so he can now play all the music he loves. Jorgenson was clearly having a good time tonight, singing and playing bluegrass with singer-songwriter-guitarist Jon Randall and bassist Mark Fain – both from Nashville – and his old California buddy – and west coast bluegrass/roots music legend –  Herb Pedersen.  The band definitely had the “west coast bluegrass” sound going – with smooth harmony singing (minus the twang) and …

Remembering Doc Watson

Published by

I know when I’ve been inspired by a performer or a piece of music…I change the strings on my guitars. Since hearing a wonderful Tim O’Brien remembrance of the late Doc Watson, I’ve got brand new strings on two of my guitars.  It’s that good. Friday evenings I’ll often ramble through YouTube videos, starting with a musician I enjoy and seeing where the recommendations take me.  More times than not, I will find a video or two that opens up a new perspective on a well-known performer.  Such was the case last evening. I’ve always enjoyed Tim O’Brien, seeing him live most recently at this summer’s Red Wing Roots Festival.  But until I heard this video from a 2012 Kennedy Center performance, I didn’t know that Doc was his musical hero — although the news wasn’t much of a shock.  I believe it was Bill Clinton who said — when giving Doc the National Medal of Arts award — that every baby boomer who picked up an acoustic guitar tried, at some point, to emulate …

Red Wing Swings

Published by

The sun broke through on Day 2 of the inaugural Red Wing Roots Music Festival just as John Jorgenson hit the stage. Somewhere, Django Reinhardt was smiling. Jorgenson’s quintet – channeling the Hot Club of France – displayed an amazing level of musicianship while having a great time in the process as one of the headliners at the Shenandoah Valley’s first Red Wing Roots Music Festival.  Now some may ask how jazz fits into the Americana roots music pantheon, but the European string jazz of Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli from the 1930s had a direct and transformative impact on roots musicians from David Grisman, to Saturday evening’s headliner Sam Bush, to fiddler extraordinaire Mark O’Connor, to mandolin phenom Chris Thile. Jorgenson’s quintet got to show their chops on Mediterranean Blues, a song written by a Vietnamese-born composer who grew up in England and now lives in Amsterdam.  Every solo was inventive and exhilarating – which is just as true about the songs in Jorgenson’s entire set. Saturday’s music began for us with Staunton native Nathan …

Red Wing takes flight

Published by

Well, that certainly was a promising start. Day 1 of the 1st Annual Red Wing Roots Music Festival promised a talented and spirited mix of the roots and branches of American music.  And in spite of gloomy skies and the occasional (and thankfully brief) rain shower, this brand new festival — located deep in the heart of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley — pretty much delivered. The festival is the brainchild of an energetic, talented, and amazingly entrepreneurial (for a bunch of roots music players) band The Steel Wheels, fronted by one of the great voices in Americana music, Trent Wagler.  Candice and I arrived back in our old Valley stomping grounds (we lived for 15 years in nearby Staunton, Virginia) after the soggy drive down from Washington just in time to walk in on the 4 p.m. set of the hosts under the tent at the Carolina Old Time Family Stage.  And given the weather, could The Steel Wheels really begin this festival with any song other than their iconic Rain in the Valley? This was …

How College Students Can Lead to a Wonderful Holiday Weekend

Published by

When a colleague asked about our plans for the upcoming holiday weekend, I told her that Andrew and Claire each had friends from college who were in town and would be staying with us.  I assumed our role was “To stay out of the way.” Thankfully, I was wrong.  Jason, Jordi, Jackie, Kelsey, Claire, and Andrew were delightful guests and hosts, sharing some of their time with us and also giving Candice and me the space to enjoy our weekend with each other. We began with our “traditional” July 4th celebrations – and all the twins’ friends joined us (rather enthusiastically, I think).  While the Takoma Park July 4th parade didn’t have quite the pizzazz of a presidential year (I miss the “Mutts for Mitt” floats with dog puppets on top of cars and there wasn’t anything to reach the level of last year’s “precision grill team”), we still had a great time laughing at the floats and enjoying the world music you always hear at our little slice of Haight-Ashbury here in DC.  Afterwards, …