We have recently gotten word of a new CD by noted Italian flatpicker, Roberto Dalla Vecchia. The project is entitled Grateful, released oddly enough on the Fingerpicking.net Records label. It features a number of Roberto’s original tunes and guest performances by his fellow Italian guitar virtuoso, Beppe Gambetta.

The music showcases Roberto’s powerful acoustic guitar work, and an interesting mix of styles.

“The recording is completely acoustic and we have tried our best to capture the true tone and sound of my guitar and the other instruments. Most of the tunes I write are a combination of my love for bluegrass and my love for all the great Italian melodies I have been listening to growing up here.”

Audio samples can be found on Dalla Vecchia’s site, and on his CD Baby page as well.

He has also made a number of guitar tab transcriptions available at no charge on his site, some with MP3 files. These are not tabs for the songs on Grateful, but primarily popular fiddle tunes arranged for flatpick style guitar. Most are his arrangements, but he also includes a Doc Watson and a Russ Barrenberg transcription.

DJs and radio show hosts who would like to receive a copy of Grateful for airplay are encouraged to contact Roberto by email.

We have posted a few times recently about the USA Songwriting Competition, an international contest where folk, bluegrass and Americana songwriters have done well this past few years.

The original information we received from them had indicated a deadline of May 31, but they have extended it to June 30 - today. Songwriters can submit an entry online using an MP3 file on the USA Songwriting web site. Submissions can also be sent by mail, but must be postmarked today to be accepted for consideration.

Today’s edition of USA Today includes an article and interview with Ralph Stanley, primarily about his new CD, A Distant land To Roam: Songs of the Carter Family, recently released on DMZ/Columbia Records. The article is by Brian Mansfield and it discusses the impact that the music of the Carters had on the young Stanley, and his impressions of A.P. Carter when they met when both were on the radio on WCYB in Bristol, VA.

You can hear audio samples from the new Stanley CD on CMT.com - unless you are a on a Macintosh computer, which are not supported. Mac users can hear samples via iTunes.

Mansfield also brought up the inevitable question of retirement for the bluegrass legend.

Stanley, who now lives in Coeburn, Va., currently has dates booked all over the eastern half of the USA well past his 80th birthday next February. Clearly, he has no intentions of hanging up his banjo any time soon.

“I know I’ll have to sometime, but, you know, I hate to think that I’d completely retire,” he says. “That’s left up to the good Lord. He has blessed me all through the years to be able to do this, and I believe he’ll be the man to tell me when to quit.”

Find the article on the USA Today web site.

This week we start a roughly month long focus on issues relating to bluegrass education, and bringing bluegrass music to young people in the schools. We start with Greg Cahill, who in addition to his work as banjo picker with Special Consensus, has been credited with helping launch IBMA’s official Bluegrass In The Schools program. Greg discusses what he has been up to with the band, his recent Huber Banjos endorsement, and how he got started making bluegrass presentations to school children.

This GrassCast is 13 minutes in length and the file download size is 13 MB.

Below is an mp3 file for you to listen here or download. The GrassCast is also available in the iTunes music store as an enhanced podcast containing photos and hyperlinks relative to the subject matter being discussed in the interview.

Listen now:
Direct Download: ep35_greg_cahill.mp3
Subscribe with:
Free Download: The GrassCast iPodder software

To subscribe with your own podcatching software, copy and past this url into the appropriate entry box in your software: http://www.thegrasscast.com/rss

The new (July/August) issue of Bluegrass Music Profiles magazine is out. The cover feature is an interview with Del McCoury, where he discusses his new Gospel CD, and some aspects of his recent and not-so-recent activities in bluegrass music.

They also talk with Lou Reid about his new release, Time, and with Blue Highway’s Rob Ickes about his side project, Three Ring Circle, with Andy Leftwich and Dave Pomeroy. Marty Stuart recalls his first Opry appearance as a member of Lester Flatt’s band while still in his teens, and Casey Driessen describes his fiddles and his love for the five string. Sam Bush opines about baseball - and his favorites in bluegrass music.

The folks at BMP are especially excited about the the issue to follow, which will include a personal interview with Earl Scruggs. Look for that in the September/October issue.

You can find full subscription details on the BMP site.

Podcasting superstar Wichita Rutherford has just opened an online store where you can purchase a DVD of The Best of 5 Minutes With Wichita Vol. 1. The disc features 19 fan favorite interviews and videos from TV and video podcasts, music and photos, and Wichita and Dan Tyminski giving away the “Female Vocalist of the Year” award at the IBMAs last year.

The interviews on the DVD include Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, Alison Krauss, Charlie Daniels, NASCAR’s Junior Johnson, John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, The Osborne Brothers, Ronnie and Rob McCoury, Bela Fleck, Chris Thile, Dierks Bentley, Tim O’Brien, Sam Bush and more. There are 6 hilarious videos from Wichita’s TV and Podcast archives and things you just can’t get anywhere else. You get the best of Ask Wichita ANYTHING as well as a photo slide show that is about the funniest thing you’ve ever seen! A load of videos, photos, music and famous folks all crammed on to one DVD. Take it from Wichita, this DVD is “Precious!”

In addition to the DVD, the store also features a Wichita Doll that is currently sold out, and you can purchase a tie just like the one Wichita wears. That tie’s not cheap though! Check it out.

Into The Blue, the most widely syndicated bluegrass music radio program in the US, is giving away a vacation getaway package to coincide with the IBMA World Of Bluegrass and International Bluegrass Awards show in Nashville, September 27-30.

Winners will receive airfare to and from Nashville, 3 nights accommodations, 2 VIP tickets to the IBMA Awards Show (9/28), and 2 VIP passes to the IBMA Fan Fest (9/29-30) - a prize package is valued at $2,000.

You can enter online (one entry per day), or by mail. Online submission and full contest details can be found on the Into The Blue web site.

The winner will be selected by random drawing on August 30, 2006. The contest is cosponsored by Bluegrass Radio Network, the parent company of Into The Blue, and Musician’s Friend.

Into The Blue is hosted weekly by four time IBMA Broadcaster Of The Year, Terry Herd.

In addition to the Reno & Smily reunion CD from 1971 which we mentioned earlier, Rebel Records had two other releases out this week.

Dave Evans’ Pretty Green Hills is his first release in five years, featuring his band, traditionally known as River Bend, with Bobby Hicks guesting on fiddle. Evans plays banjo, Mike Garris is on bass, Merl Johnson on guitar, and Randy Thomas on mandolin. Bo Issac adds tenor vocals to Evan’s soulful lead singing.

Evans got his schooling in traditional bluegrass by working with some of the best. His first gig was with Earl Taylor in the late 1960s, followed by stints with Larry Sparks, Red Allen, The Boys From Indiana, and Melvin Goins. When he formed his own band in 1978, he had earned his reputation as a solid traditional style banjo player and lead vocalist. Now, more than a dozen albums later, Rebel offers a set of mostly traditional and standard bluegrass numbers, with a couple of originals each from Evans and Dixie and Tom T. Hall.

The other new Rebel release is an all a cappella Gospel compilation CD, Feel Like My Time Ain’t Long, with tracks from such highly-regarded artists as Blue Highway, Ralph Stanley, IIIrd Tyme Out, Larry Sparks, Paul Williams, and The Forbes Family. Included are such instant classics as Blue Highway’s Some Day from their Midnight Storm project, and a marvelous version of Gloryland from Ralph Stanley and the 1971 edition of The Clinch Mountain Boys. Many have described this as the best quartet Stanley ever fielded, with Roy Lee Centers, Jack Cooke and Keith Whitley assisting the good doctor.

When I Cross Over Jordan from the original IIIrd Tyme Out members (Baucom, Bibey, Deaton, Moore) is included, along with a stirring mountain version of Amazing Grace (call and response format) by The Marshall Family.

Rebel doesn’t put audio samples on their site, but both new releases are available on iTunes. If you have the iTunes software installed, you can sample the audio (or purchase downloads) for either Pretty Green Hills or Feel Like My Time Ain’t Long from iTunes.

Tonight (6/28) at 9:00 p.m. (EDT) on Great American Country TV (GAC), Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski will join WSM’s Bill Cody for an overview of the band’s music videos. The show is called The Collection, and each Wednesday evening GAC has a sit down with a popular artist to look back over their video careers, presenting snippets from the videos and observations from the performers. The show is primarily hosted by Storme Warren, but Cody, who hosts GAC’s Masters program, is pinch hitting with Alison and Dan.

Sixteen years of AKUS videos will be showcased, and one expects that the commentary will provide real entertainment value. The show airs again at 1:00 a.m. on Thursday morning (6/29).

GAC is available on cable systems throughout the US. You can find out whether your provider offers it here.

We just heard from our friend, Greg Cahill, founder, banjo player and chief everything officer with Chicago-based Special Consensus. He was just back from a week teaching at NashCamp and filled us in on a personnel change in the band.

Our tenor-singing bass player for the past 2.5 years, Tres Nugent, decided he would like to move back to his home state of LA to spend time with his mother and grandparents. He relocated to Nashville with his father, Dickie Nugent, about 10 years ago and now would like to spend time with the rest of his family. He gave us plenty of notice and we of course parted company good friends. Tres knew it would be too difficult to attempt to stay with The Special C when living so far away from the band and from most of our performance regions so he gave his notice and helped us find his replacement. Once settled in LA, he will be working on an off-shore drilling rig - a mighty big lifestyle change from playing bass in a touring bluegrass band!

We hired a great tenor singing bass player from Elkmont, AL - David Thomas. He actually plays mandolin, guitar and bass and sings the high parts effortlessly. David made his Special C debut at the ROMP festival last Friday in Owensboro, KY and did an outstanding job - he learned most of the band repertoire and then some. He also shined at the Summersville, WV fest - in the pouring rain and flooded campground conditions - and he is already settled into the band sound. We look forward to working with David and will include him on the new Special C recording that we have started for the Pinecastle Records label (our sixth on that label).

Look for Special C’s performance schedule online to find a chance to catch them in person this season.

The first music video from Sam Bush’s new CD, Laps In Seven on Sugar Hill, has been released for online viewing. It is for the song The River’s Gonna Run, a duet with Emmy Lou Harris.

You can watch the video on CMT.com, or for folks who have difficulty using CMT’s video viewer (like any Mac users), it has also been posted on YouTube, and on Sugar Hill’s MySpace page.

No word yet on when or whether it will be featured on CMT’s cable television programming, but we’ll report whatever we hear from Sugar Hill on that front.

UPDATE 4:22 p.m.: We just heard back from Sugar Hill that the Bush video is in rotation on CMT’s Wide Open Country, and The Edge Of Country on GAC. It is also running on CMT Pure.

The video was directed by Traci Goudie, whose credits include videos for Merle Haggard, Patty Loveless, Marty Stuart, Patty Griffin, and Kelly Willis. It was shot on location at Marathon Village in Nashville - the home of Tennessee’s first and only automobile, the Marathon of Marathon Motor Works.

In addition to the Dillards reissue we mentioned yesterday, Rounder is also releasing a number of other reissue projects today. One that should appeal to readers of The Bluegrass Blog is Bob Carlin’s debut solo album from 1980, Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer Banjo.

The CD features 14 tracks, mostly instrumental, with Carlin’s clawhammer banjo as the focus. Pete Sutherland on fiddle and Alan Podber on guitar join Carlin, who also provides a few vocals. The original release of this CD did much to bring Carlin to the richly-deserved prominence he has achieved as a practitioner of old time banjo.

Tunes featured include Big Scioty, Clinch Mountain Backstep, The Falls of Richmond, Shady Grove, Pretty Little Indian and a number of other popular and obscure old time numbers. No audio yet on the Rounder site.

Claire Lynch will join Gracie Muldoon this afternoon for an interview on Muldoon In The Afternoon on worldwidebluegrass.com. Her show runs from 4:00-6:00 in the afternoon.

Worldwidebluegrass.com is streamed over the internet and listeners can choose WinAmp, Windows Media or Real Media on either a dial up or broadband connection (128K or 32K).

Gracie will surely talk with Claire about her new CD, New Day, recently released on Rounder Records, and play music from the CD as well.

Justin Moses of Blue Moon Rising is set to join Gracie for an interview on Friday (6/30).

The Williams & Clark Expedition has just announced the release of their new self-titled CD. The disc features 14 tunes including the first single off the release, Life’s Railway To Heaven, performed with special guest Marty Raybon. One other tune of the disc features Rhonda Vincent as a special guest.

The official release/availability date is July 1st. As of the writing of this post, there are no audio samples available on their site.

Pick My Kiss: The Bluegrass Tribute to Red Hot Chili Peppers is the title of the latest edition of bluegrass covers for popular pop, rock and country acts from CMH Records. It includes both vocal and instrumental tributes, eleven tracks in all.

Among the songs featured on the CD are: Suck My Kiss, Scar Tissue, The Zephyr Song, By The Way, Behind the S and 6 others.

The CD is officially released today (6/27), but there are no audio samples yet available on the CMH site. Orders can be placed there, however.

Many a current bluegrass fan first encountered the music watching The Andy Griffith Show on television. During the early-to-mid 1960s, The Dillards appeared on this hit show in regular guest spots as The Darling Boys, hillbilly musicians who would come to town from time to time, generally with hilarious results. This helped propel the band to folk and bluegrass music stardom, with the band headlining festivals and recording for Elektra Records for the next decade or so.

They began to experiment with adding percussion and electric instruments to their original bluegrass sound, and became early pioneers of the then burgeoning folk rock scene in the late 60s and early 70s. Collaborations with such mainstream artists as Gene Clark and The Byrds followed, with the band becoming less recognized as a bluegrass act.

Rounder Records is set to reissue an album from 1979, Decade Waltz, which comes from this folk rock period for The Dillards. Rodney Dillard and Dean Webb are featured, along with Herb Pedersen, Jeff Gilkinson, Douglas Bounsall and Paul York. It is scheduled to be available tomorrow, June 27.

No audio up on the Rounder site at this time.

The official web site of Alison Krauss & Union Station is offering a free download of the song, Jubilee, which was featured in the award-winning film documentary, Paper Clips. The free track will only be available from the site today, June 26, until midnight (CDT).

Find the download here.

Paper Clips is the story of how the children in a rural Smoky Mountain community in Tennessee came to appreciate the wider world in which they live through a Holocaust Memorial project envisioned by Linda Hooper, their middle school principal. The children vowed to collect 11 million paper clips, one for each victim of the Nazi regime’s inhumanity, and the film recounts their quest to collect the clips, and what they learned about the horrors of that time.

The Krauss track, Jubilee, has not been previously available on any recording, or download service. After today’s free download period expires, it will go on sale in Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

Lonesome River Band has just announced the release of a new CD, The Road With No End. The scheduled release date for this disc is July 18th, 2006, but the band has advance copies for sale at their shows now. You can view their tour schedule here to find a show near you.

We are very excited about this project with all the new guys in the band. We will be doing allot of the new material on our live shows as well.

In addition to the new CD, the band has announced that dobro player Matt Leadbetter has joined the Lonesome River Band as a full time member.

He is also on the new LRB CD. I know you will enjoy hearing and meeting this fine young man at a show near you.

This post is a contribution from world renowned podcast celebrity Wichita Rutherford. Be sure to visit his site 5MinutesWithWichita.com to listen to his weekly podcast featuring interviews with bluegrass stars.

I don”t think I”m alone when I say I”ve never met somebody I didn”t like. Now that”s a famous saying and everything but I find it to be true. When you first meet somebody they show you the best smile they”ve got and that handshake their Dad taught them or that smile their Mom gave them and they look you right in the eye. You know you do the same thing. It makes you both feel good because you are showing each other all the best of “you” that you can both whip up. Oh, that”s just so nice. I find the people I like to go visit and that I really like to come visit me are people who love a lot of folks, and that are loved by a lot of folks. I like people who wear overalls and people who sometimes where t-shirts that fit fine at the shoulders but have a whole other thing going on at the stomach area. I like people who have some dogs and like to fish. I like people who eat at The Cracker Barrel. I like people who want a bass boat real bad and people who like sausage biscuits and buy the same brand because their Mom bought it. I like people who don”t snicker when an old person tells them something that”s important to them for the third time. I like people who like to be out working on their farm moving rocks or mowing and people who make things that nobody makes anymore like butterscotch pie and hominy. I like people who like my parents. I like people who love and respect their own parents. I like people who make the “honk your horn” sign at truck drivers. I like people who know what color their Mother”s eyes are and know how their Grandmother met their Grandfather and know what their Father”s first job was. I like people who remember the Tennessee Barn Dance over in Knoxville and The Opry when it lived in the Ryman. I like people who tell me I dropped a dollar and smile at me when they know they”ve spent too much time in the intersection. I like people who tear up when they hear a good Mac Wiseman song and people who start a sentence with “Awwe”" when I thank them for something they”ve done for me when I didn”t ask them to. I like old people who say “Well, bless your heart” and waitresses that call me “Honey”. I really like a lot of people. I really love a lot of people too. I don”t think I”m alone when I say I”ve never met somebody I didn”t like. It”s The Bluegrass Way.

Wichita Rutherford

Belated congratulations to Lonesome County, who won the Bluegrass talent Contest at Renfro Valley, KY in mid-May. They traveled from their home in Michigan to compete, and came away with a trophy, and the chance to perform twice on the main stage during the Old Joe Clark Festival.

Members include Chad Jeremy on guitar, Lee Kaufmann on banjo, Kevin Frank on mandolin, Marty Somberg on fiddle and Paul Shapiro on bass.

The band has posted a video on their web site where you can watch them perform at the Renfro Valley festival.