Band competition at Mount Airy 2023 – photo © G Nicholas Hancock The Mount Airy Blue Grass & Old-Time Fiddlers Convention is a popular western North Carolina festival devoted to old-time and bluegrass music and dance. Established in 1972, the first weekend in June’s annual event is held at Veterans Memorial Park in Mount Airy. The music festival features numerous solo and band competitions where winners are awarded cash prizes. Regular performers from past conventions have included the late old-time fiddler Benton Flippen, Appalachian-style flat foot dancer Ira Bernstein, and old-time str ..read more

Margie Sullivan, The First Lady of Bluegrass Gospel Music, so named by Bill Monroe, and matriarch of the famed Sullivan Family Gospel Singers, passed away on May 31, 2023, at age 90.  Margie Louise Brewster Sullivan was born January 22, 1933, in Winnsboro, Franklin Parish, Louisiana. She was the sixth of 12 children of sharecroppers Otis Leon and Ruby Alma Givens Brewster. Brewster developed an early love of gospel music, and when she was 13 years old, her father used some of the little profit from their cotton crop and bought her a $12 Montgomery Ward guitar with money earned from tendi ..read more

For the latest single from his Accomplice Two album, guitar maestro Tommy Emmanuel has a music video with the Del McCoury Band on the Merle Travis classic, Sweet Temptation. Bluegrass and country fans alike will recall Ricky Skaggs’ 1979 recording of this song, giving us the first taste of his country revivalist sound that was to sweep over Nashville a few years later. Here Tommy, Del, and the boys give it a swingy acoustic/bluegrass vibe, with Del singing up high and all the guys tearing through their solos. Emmanuel says that cutting with the McCourys was a major moment for him. “When I fou ..read more

This report on the fate of the popular Barcelona Bluegrass Jam is a contribution from Michael Luchtan, an American bluegrass enthusiast living in Spain. This regular meeting had recently lost its long time home, which had provided a home for grassers along the northern Mediterranean coast to socialize and play together. We’re excited to share some fantastic news with all of you, our fellow bluegrass enthusiasts. Thanks to some adventurous souls who dared to believe in our bluegrass jams, we’ve been able to establish ourselves in two fabulous locations. We’re sharing this information for anyon ..read more

It’s hardly surprising that Leftover Salmon chose to recruit Billy Strings, Oliver Wood, and Darol Anger to contribute to their new album, Grass Roots, especially considering the fact that they, like the band itself, represent some of the more progressive forces of today’s bluegrass variety. The fact that Leftover Salmon has been a formidable influence in the newgrass evolution finds any collaboration of that sort especially well considered, and even more so on this project intended to highlight the bluegrass side of the band. So too, the choice of covers — including songs from Dylan, The Gra ..read more

Retired WSM Grand Ole Opry photographer extraordinaire Les Leverett passed away on June 2, 2023. He was 96 years old.  Leverett took some of the most historical images in country music history, with his photographs adorning over 200 album covers, winning a Grammy award in 1966 for the cover of Porter Wagoner’s album, Confessions of a Broken Man, and a Billboard award for Country Album Cover of the Year in 1973 for Dolly Parton’s LP, Bubbling Over.   Laslie “Les” Leverett was born on April 23, 1927, in Montgomery, Alabama. He started dabbling in photography while serving aboard a tro ..read more

These images from the 51st annual Hills of Home Bluegrass Festival, launched by Dr. Ralph Stanley in McClure, VA, are a contribution from Laci Mack ..read more

Molly Johnson, a 16 year old banjo picker from Pumpkintown, SC, has been announced as the recipient of the 2023 IBMA scholarship to attend Béla Fleck’s Blue Ridge Banjo Camp. Each year the Association pays the tuition for one deserving young player to take part in this camp, which is structured much differently from the typical educational music workshop weekends. Johnson has been around bluegrass and old time music all her life, and started banjo lessons with the Young Appalachian Musicians program when she was eight years old. Since then private lessons have helped her grow and improve. She ..read more

The Kody Norris Show is releasing their latest album today, Rhinestone Revival on Rebel Records, and have offered to share a track with our readers to celebrate. Like all the music they record, this one reflects the band’s commitment to traditional bluegrass as it was played by the early pioneers of our music. It’s a hard charging, fast moving number called Gotta Get My Baby Back, which Kody says he finished just in time to make it on the album. “I wrote this song a couple nights before the last studio session for Rhinestone Revival. I was needing an up tempo barn burner to complete the proje ..read more

Alison Brown may have taken a chance by opting to release an all-instrumental album. After all, songs that don’t have singing aren’t always the most promising prospects when it comes to  garnering commercial consideration. Nevertheless, as one of today’s most prominent banjo pickers, she has the respect and wherewithal needed to bring that instrument front and center, and give it the proper positioning it deserves. It is, as she herself says, more than merely a background instrument, and, as such, it deserves the respect it’s sometimes denied. As a result, her new album, On Banjo, lives ..read more