Molly and Flux play Bluegrass like the founders intended
Molly Tuttle and Jerry Douglas team up at DelFest for some high-powered bluegrass.
Molly Tuttle and Jerry Douglas team up at DelFest for some high-powered bluegrass.
The bluegrass world’s answer to the satirical paper The Onion – the always off-kilter Bluegrass Intelligencer – is at it again with several not-to-be-believed posts from the world of roots music. In the wake of last weekend’s DelFest Bluegrass Festival and bad weather in the mid-Atlantic region, BI’s intrepid staff reports on how rain, hail, and gale-force winds could not dislodge the “bluegrass hair” of the host Del McCoury band. As reported by BI online: On Saturday, an unfortunate combination of gale force wind, torrential rain, powerful lightning, and crushing downfalls of hail rocked DelFest, the popular musical event hosted by the Del McCoury Band. Importantly, the relentless onslaught of life-threatening weather was not sufficient to disturb the hair of anyone in the McCoury family. Another BI post reported on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that a solo by guitarist extraordinarie Bryan Sutton was “pornographic and obscene.” What, you didn’t hear about that one from Nina Totenberg? Well, the NPR legal affairs reporter can’t be expected to catch everything. That’s why we depend on the …
The Washington, DC area will be host to some terrific acoustic music acts during the month of May, ending with a stellar lineup at DelFest over the Memorial Day weekend. With the coming of beautiful spring weather, this is a perfect time to hear some live music. Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of the Monday Night Concerts of the Institute of Musical Traditions. The 2008-2009 season wraps up in May, but not before a May 4th concert in celebration of Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday (I bet they’ll be some righteous sing-alongs) and the final DC-area concert of the Canadian band Tanglefoot on May 11th. According to the IMT website, Tanglefoot is “Stan Rogers meets Van Halen.” For some straight-ahead traditional bluegrass, check out the DC Bluegrass Union’s Spring Concert on May 9th with Dan Paisley & Southern Grass. Then over the Memorial Day weekend, all bluegrass lovers in the Mid-Atlantic region will be heading to Cumberland, Maryland, for the second annual DelFest, hosted by the Del McCoury Band. There’s a stellar line-up, including Old Crow …