Jason Carter, the hot shot fiddler in The Del McCoury Band, is profiled in the March 2007 issue of Strings Magazine. This issue has a photo of Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti on the cover, and should be on newstands soon.

The piece on Jason (by Robert L. Doerschuk, a Nashville writer and musician) won’t shed much new light for bluegrass fans who have followed his career, but it is nice to see him featured in such a high profile publication, which is more generally oriented towards classical violin.

The article does talk a bit about his influences, and how he learned to play.

Aside from practicing some hoedown rhythm patterns he’d heard from Paul Warren and other early bluegrass fiddlers, Carter based his education almost entirely on copying how fiddlers played behind singers. “I never even learned many fiddle tunes,” he says. “I remember learning ‘Katy Hill’ from a recording by Georgia Slim [aka Robert Rutland], who was a great player. But I mostly listened to how the fiddle player backed up the singer.”

Strings will generally make a few articles in each issue available online, so check back there from time to time to see if Jason’s is posted.

UPDATE 3/4/07: The Jason Carter article is available now on the Strings site.