bluegrass

We've visited so far this year with the Infamous Stringdusters and Greensky Bluegrass about their journeys to top billing slots in the acoustic hybrid scene known as jamgrass. In Episode 202, Craig interviews Adam Aijala and Ben Kauffman, founding members of Yonder Mountain String Band, possibly the dominant jamming bluegrass band of the past two decades.

Bill Monroe's most devoted student Mike Compton has unearthed 13 tunes by the father of bluegrass and recruited Music City's finest to bring them to life. With a record at the top tiers of bluegrass since the 80s, nobody is more qualified.

Alloys make the strongest metal, so it was fortifying to hear that German-born guitarist Thomm Jutz and SteelDrivers fiddler Tammy Rogers had joined voices to record an album together. Key players in the world of bluegrass, Jutz and Rogers have built on a five-year co-writing relationship to make the new duo project Surely Will Be Singing.

The String speaks with Kalamazoo, MI jamgrass stars Greensky Bluegrass on the occasion of their eighth studio album Stress Dreams. Mandolinist Paul Hoffman and bass player Mike Devol join Craig Havighurst from home.

Doyle Lawson has been mingling the holy and the down home in his blistering traditional bluegrass over a career on the road stretching back just shy of 60 years. Now at 77, he's stepping away from touring and the album cycle, leaving us with the swan song album Roundtable. In a career-spanning conversation we talk about getting hired by Jimmy Martin at age 18, about forming and leading his band Quicksilver, and about his observations, as a conservative Christian, of efforts to diversify bluegrass music.

2020's lockdown inspired the first song on Della Mae's new album, a cathartic, vibrantly bluegrass project called Family Reunion. Celia Woodsmith and Kimber Ludiker talk about the band's origins, its overseas adventures and the feeling of making music again in the same room.

A five-year effort by scholars and musicians reveals the unknown story of how a migration of Appalachian workers helped the modern bluegrass industry flower in southwestern Ohio after World War II. The album, featuring 16 new recordings of historically important songs, was named IBMA Album of the Year last week.

On the most celebratory night of a smaller-than-usual World of Bluegrass, in Raleigh, NC, the IBMA Thursday night crowned a new Entertainer of the Year and one of its youngest ever in bandleader and songwriter Billy Strings. The artist, who released his third album last Friday, also won Guitar Player of the Year for the second time in three years.

Béla Fleck delivers the third album in his multi-decade bluegrass album trilogy, mingling his oldest musical colleagues with a cross-section of today's greatest younger pickers. His 19-song double album My Bluegrass Heart is a landmark in a huge career and the hook for a major fall and winter tour. He'll appear as a headliner at this week's International Bluegrass Music Association convention and festival in Raleigh, NC.

Mark O’Connor will turn 60 this August and not far behind, the 50th anniversary of his arrival on the roots music scene. A musical prodigy if ever there…