bluegrass

After a three-year tutelage with Old Crow Medicine Show, multi-faceted Appalachian artist Mason Via has set out on his own road. He was raised in bluegrass festival campgrounds and at picking parties hosted by his dad, songwriter and musician David Via. Bluegrass royalty hung out at his home near the North Carolina/Virginia border, and it’s rubbed off. After trying a few musical directions, Via’s self-titled album of this year shows range, depth, and a command of bluegrass and country moods. Meet a 28-year-old you’ll be hearing a lot more about if you follow acoustic roots.

Superstars Alison Krauss and Billy Strings stand out among this year’s IBMA Award nominations, which were announced on Wednesday morning. But a coincidentally timed show at Tuesday’s Bluegrass Nights At The Ryman series went at least as far in telling the story of where the genre is going in 2025. The co-bill featured AJ Lee & Blue Summit and East Nash Grass, artists enjoying their national breakouts and who are both now in the running for major awards in September when the International Bluegrass Music Association brings its World of Bluegrass convention for the first time to Chattanooga.

The story of how global banjo explorer Joe Troop (formerly of Che Apalache) met Venezuelan harpist and all-around folk music master Larry Bellorín is testimony to the magic of global culture and a cautionary tale about the stark turn US policy has taken against working asylum seekers this year. Over three years as the bilingual, genre-fusing, and multi-instrumental duo Larry & Joe, they’ve toured widely and made two albums together to great acclaim among folk music lovers. They’re one of the most charismatic and culture-crossing acts to come out of roots music in the past decade. Here in a special episode of The String, they tell their story in an interview that took place in Knoxville, TN in March.

A few years ago, Colorado’s Tyler Grant was twanging an electric guitar and touring with his band Grant Farm. After the pandemic, he joined the world of river guiding and entertaining customers on trips through some of the West’s most beautiful and important canyons. Now Grant has circled back to the music that propelled him into the spotlight as guitar player in the Emmitt-Nershi Band - bluegrass guitar. His new album Flatpicker is a mix of instrumentals and songs, but they’re all about the places and stories of the western land he cherishes.

Sierra Hull brings a measure of small-town delight and innocence to roots and bluegrass that perfectly compliments her innate gifts and her formal schooling in high level music-making. The mandolinist, songwriter, singer, and band leader has emerged, since her youthful debut in 2008, as a star of her field and an inspiring figure in Americana. Her four IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year awards are part of the story. But so is her composing, her collaborating and her records. The first in five years - and her first independent release - is A Tip Toe High Wire, coming March 7. This episode complements a bio-oriented show in 2018, emphasizing Hull’s recent work with Béla Fleck, Cory Wong and others, and of course the thought behind and production of her newest release.

Up in New York, Eric Lindberg and Doni Zasloff lead Nefesh Mountain, a one-of-a-kind progressive string band that has blended bluegrass, newgrass, and traditional Jewish folk music for just over a decade. Their Jan. 31 release, Beacons, is an ambitious double album with an Americana side and a bluegrass side. Then on Valentine’s Day, North Carolina couple Austin and Sarah McCombie - The Chatham Rabbits - offered their fourth album Be Real With Me, a nine-song set that sees their songwriting getting more personally candid and their sound enhanced by electric textures and percussion for the first time. As they both deal honestly with being married for love and music, I can hear these recordings in conversation with each other.

In one of the big surprise stories in roots music of the past six months, Georgia-based Russell Moore was named the newest member of Alison Krauss and Union Station, taking over the male vocal and guitar role held by Dan Tyminski for years. Moore is on the upcoming album Arcadia and set to go on extensive tours in 2025 and ‘26. It’s a big move for this fan favorite. Moore got his start with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver in the 80s and then started his own band - IIIrd Tyme Out - in 1991. Since then he’s been perhaps the most awarded male voice in bluegrass. This is the story of how he launched and managed his impressive and influential career.

While the public has become hyper aware of Billy Strings on his rocket ride to the top of bluegrass, only a small retinue of the music’s traditional veteran artists have achieved popular name recognition. I think especially of Del McCoury and Ricky Skaggs. But there’s a deeper world there, and we should work a little harder to shine the light on more of the old school masters working today. That’s what episode #299 of The String is about, through conversations with singer Danny Paisley and mandolinist John Reischman. They are “musicians’ musicians,” which doesn’t help them put food on the table or build their legacies.

This week on The String, Molly Tuttle is the link in common between two of the exceptional breakout artists during an exciting era of bluegrass music. Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is the electrifying fiddle player in Tuttle’s band Golden Highway and a two time IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year. We get into her journey from Charlottesville, VA to school at Berklee to Nashville and the latest chapter in her solo life, the wonderful album I Built A World. AJ Lee and Tuttle go back even farther, to the family band they shared growing up in the fertile bluegrass community of California. AJ Lee, an exceptional and original singer, has led her own band Blue Summit for nine years, and their newest album City Of Glass is one reason they were nominated as IBMA New Artist of the Year for 2024.

It is always a good year to be a McCoury in bluegrass, but 2024 may be especially memorable for the Nashville family, as the Del McCoury Band became Entertainers of the Year for the first time since 2004, while the Travelin' McCourys were named Instrumental Group of the Year at the 35th annual IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards. As a bonus, Del's son Rob was named Banjo Player of the Year for the second time at a ceremony at Raleigh, NC’s Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, hosted by Missy Raines and John Cowan.