Our work on the new site design continues. I just became aware that the “Email This Post” feature was not working properly.

It has now been fixed and emails are sending as they should be.

Many apologies to those who have attempted to email posts in the last week.

Keep an eye out for continued improvements, and let us know of any other glitches you may find.

Continuing with our Mike Seeger theme today, here is news of a multi-disc retrospective on the recording career of The New Lost City Ramblers.

50 Years: Where Do You Come From? Where Do You Go? was released August 25 by Smithsonian Folkways. The 3 CD box set contains a total of 81 tracks (6 previously unreleased) and an 88 page booklet with notes on each track. Extensive biographical details are provided for each of the three eras of the band, as described in the booklet: 1958-1962, 1963-1973, and The New Lost City Ramblers at 50.

The CDs include the band’s choices from their long recording career (1958-1973), plus field recordings of some of the musicians who had a strong influence on their sound.

Audio samples from all of the tracks can be found on the Smithsonian Folkways web site, where you can also purchase individual tracks for download. There are three free tracks there as well, which can be downloaded as either .MP3 or.FLAC files.

Wikio has published their April list of the top 100 music blogs, and there is The Bluegrass Blog at #97! That’s not bad for a bluegrass music site when the rest of the blogs are geared toward pop, rock and rap.

Wikio is a blog and news aggregator, and a search engine for blogs developed in France in 2006. It is available online in French, Italian, Spanish, German and English.

Their rankings are automated, dynamic lists generated based on links to individual blogs within news articles and RSS feeds.

Thanks to all our readers – and those other blogs and news services who link to us – for helping us make the top 100!

It turns out that the info we got from Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver last week about Alan Johnson returning to the band was only half right.

Big Al is indeed taking over the fiddle spot from Brandon Godman, but only on an interim basis until a new full-time fiddler is hired. He is still working for the US Postal Service and is unable to handle Doyle’s heavy touring schedule.

Doyle is auditioning fiddlers now, and we’ll report back when a new one is announced.