Earlier in the month we told you about the Dan Tyminski video for the title track from his album Wheels, released June 17 on Rounder Records.

Rounder has revealed a little about the making of the video and the picturesque setting that all but steals the show.

Directed by Rocky Schenck and produced by Rocky Schenck and Brad Paul, the video, was shot on the unique Sierra Hotel train car on June 10 -11 in California.

The Sierra Hotel car was part of the California Zephyr line that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles from 1948 to 1983. The car was then purchased privately and completely restored and customized. The producers of the video chartered the car and had it attached to the Amtrak Coast Starlight train (which runs from Seattle to Los Angeles) in Oakland and shot the video during the journey south to Los Angeles and back to Oakland the next day. Wheels features grand iconic scenery, informal performances and humorous vignettes about the band finding ways to stay entertained while on the road.

The video is being added on GAC on Tuesday, July 22 and is currently in heavy rotation on CMT Pure. It can also be viewed online.

Ricky Wasson, long-time guitarist and lead vocalist with JD Crowe & The New South, will soon have his own solo project on Rural Rhythm Records.

Entitled From The Heart and Soul, the CD is due to be released on August 12. Joining Wasson will be J.D. Crowe on banjo, Ron Stewart on fiddle and banjo, Adam Steffey on mandolin, Harold Nixon on bass, Randy Kohrs on resonator guitar and Don Rigsby, Sonya Isaacs and Ben Isaacs on harmony vocals.

The first single from this release, Merle Haggard’s Losin’ In Las Vegas, is included in the recent Rural Rhythm sampler, Fresh Cuts & Key Tracks, and we have a brief audio sample you can hear right now.

Listen now:

This one we will certainly be looking forward to hearing in full.

We posted last week with the hapy news of Adam Steffey’s marriage to Tina Trianosky. At the time, we promised some wedding photos once Adam returned from his honeymoon and got his feet back under him.

As so it has come to pass. Here are a few shots from after the ceremony on May 10 at the First Baptist Church in Mountain City, TN.

    

This past Saturday, May 10, saw uber mandolinist Adam Steffey wed to Tina Trianosky, lovely young lady and fine banjo picker. The happy couple were united at the First Baptist Church in Mountain City, TN with a full contingent of bluegrass royalty in attendance.

Congratulations Adam and Tina!

When the newlyweds return home I’ll see if we can get some photos from the wedding to share on The Bluegrass Blog.

Our friend David Conner shared this YouTube link with us. It features a number of videos shot during an appearance by The Dan Tyminski Band at The Birchmere on March 1 of this year.

Ten songs from the show are posted, including the title track from Dan’s upcoming Rounder CD, Wheels, several cuts from his previous solo release (Tiny Broken Heart, Stuck In The Middle Of Nowhere) and a few bluegrass classics (Rocky Road Blues, Man Of Constant Sorrow, Muleskinner Blues, Mary Ann).

The band includes Tyminski on guitar and vocals, Ron Stewart on banjo, Adam Steffey on mandolin, Barry bales on bass and Justin Moses on fiddle.

The video was shot with a hand held camera, so it’s a bit shaky at times, but the audio is terrific and they give a fine taste of how strong this band is in concert. This show in March took place one day after I saw the band perform in Roanoke (review here).

You can find all the videos on YouTube, and we’ve included the Wheels video for your enjoyment here.

Brance and I had the opportunity to see The Dan Tyminski Band in concert on Friday (2/29) at The Jefferson Center here in Roanoke, VA. We had been looking forward to seeing them perform since the formation of the band was announced during the 2007 IBMA World Of Bluegrass convention, and The Jefferson’s Shaftman Hall was a near-perfect setting.

The band is composed of Barry Bales on bass, Justin Moses on fiddle/dobro, Adam Steffey on mandolin, and Ron Stewart on banjo with Tyminski on guitar and lead vocals. I had spoken with Dan earlier that day, and had several prior conversations with Ron and Adam about the new band. That, together with my keen awareness of each member’s musicianship, left me with some fairly high expectations going into the show.

They emerged from stage right with no introduction, and launched into a blistering, nearly-two hour set of traditional bluegrass music with the characteristic front-of-the-beat drive that distinguishes the finest practitioners of the art. It was a powerful ensemble sound, with vocals to match.

The material was chosen from Dan’s 2000 release, Carry Me Across The Mountains, the band’s upcoming Wheels CD, plus numbers Dan (and Adam) had recorded with Alison Krauss & Union Station. Throw in some bluegrass classics and you had a full concert of expertly performed, passionately delivered music.

Tyminski’s voice has been a familiar one in bluegrass since his emergence with Lonesome River Band in the late 1980s, and he gave an impressive performance Friday night. He offered versions of One Tear and Free Born Man on top of cuts from his CD like Carry Me Across The Mountain, Stuck In The Middle Of Nowhere, Think About You Every Day and Tiny Broken Heart.

Of course they also performed Man Of Constant Sorrow, the most recent bluegrass song to hit pop and country radio with a vengeance, for which Dan provided the voice over in the O Brother, Where Art Thou movie. If you have caught Dan doing this one with AKUS, you’ll have heard his amusing tale about breaking the news about scoring the movie gig to his wife, but it is a funny one even on subsequent rehearings. (more…)

Here are a bunch of photos I took at the Dan Tyminski Band concert on Friday night. The band was great, on stage and off. They did a fine show, and took plenty of time to visit with fans afterwards.

Our Grasstowne buddies, Alan Bibey and Phil Leadbetter, both contacted us earlier this week mentioning the big doin’s in Bristol, TN on Saturday (1/26).

It’s the 3rd annual Pickin’ at the Paramount all star show where top bluegrass artists get together for two shows, performing together in round robin-type groupings quite different from the way fans are used to seeing them.

Artists involved in this year’s show include Mike Bub, Tim Laughlin, Ron Stewart, Adam Steffey, Jim Hurst, Dale Ann Bradley, Bradley Walker, Alecia Nugent, Terry Baucom, Phil Leadbetter, Alan Bibey, David Talbot, Missy Raines, Ricky Wasson, Kenny & Amanda Smith and Josh Williams. Cindy Baucom will be the emcee.

If you live within a comfortable drive’s distance of Bristol, this show would be well worth the trip. Shows are at 3:00 and 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount Center for the Arts, a restored art deco movie house from the 1920’s.

More details about online ticket purchasing can be found on The Paraount site.

The Dan Tyminski Band performed their debut show this past week, offering two sets at Nashville’s Station Inn on Wednesday evening.

Our friend, old time banjo picker Tina Trianosky, was at the show and sent us some impressions - and found us some photos taken from the crowd.

The show was one of the best bluegrass shows I’ve ever seen. The combination of musicians Dan has put together is unbelievable. They played a combination of original and traditional songs; including some of the classics from Dan’s time with the Lonesome River Band, songs from Dan’s solo CD and songs from AKUS.

The sold out Station Inn crowd particularly liked Mary Ann, One Tear, No Place to Hide, and Del McCoury’s Who Showed Who. One of the biggest highlights came when Ronnie Bowman joined the DTB for two songs, Money in the Bank and Long Gone. Ron Stewart played an smoking version of Pike County Breakdown.

I can’t begin to express how good it was. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Dan did a wonderful job of incorporating new material from their upcoming CD as well as crowd favorites. I can’t wait for the next show!

Here are a couple more photos from the show, taken by NC banjo picker Eric Hardin - who apologized for the quality.

      

The Dan Tyminski Band is still hard at work in the studio, trying to complete the recording of their debut CD before they begin touring in January ‘08. At this point, Rounder is looking for an early spring release for this highly anticipated, as yet unnamed project.

Mandolinist Adam Steffey says that the band has gelled quickly, and is getting a great sound in the studio.

“The recording is going well and we’re all very pleased with what we’ve got down so far. We are cutting at Omni Studios in Nashville and are trying to finish the project up and get it ready to mix and master by the end of the year. It’s mostly new songs written by folks within the band, with two new tunes co-written by Craig Market and Darren Shoemaker, a Patrick McDougal tune, a Ron Block original, and a tune from Jeff White.

We’re all happy with the way it’s shaping up and can’t wait to get it finished up and out to all the folks.”

Here are a few photos from the first tracking sessions.

Their first show will be at Nashville’s Station Inn on January 2, followed by a quick west coast trip to San Francisco and Portland. Touring begins for them in earnest by mid-February, and you can find the shows as they are updated on Dan’s MySpace page.

We caught up with Adam Steffey on Friday, and he shared some details on the upcoming - and highly-anticipated - debut recording from The Dan Tyminski Band.

Adam told us that they would be getting together in Nashville on November 18 to take publicity photos and perhaps rehearse a bit, and then spend the next three days heading into Thanksgiving recording with a vengeance. The completed master is expected to be delivered to Rounder early in ‘08, and the label is apparently intending to rush it into production before spring.

The new band will feature Tyminski on guitar, Steffey on mandolin, Barry Bales on bass, Ron Stewart on banjo and Justin Moses on fiddle.

Adam mentioned that several tracks for a future Dan Tyminski solo project were recorded at the same time as the sessions for Ron Block’s Doorway CD, with Tyminski, Steffey and Bales along with Block on banjo. He wasn’t sure if those tracks might end up on the new project, perhaps with Stewart and Moses re-cutting tracks, or whether those songs might be re-cut from scratch.

The band is accepting dates for ‘08 and beyond, and the current schedule can be found on the Keith Case web site.

Another piece of news we picked up here at IBMA is the imminent launch of Dan Tyminski’s band.

All of the Union Station guys have been looking at a blank schedule for 2008, with Alison Krauss planning to take the year off from band work, and it seems to have been the opportune moment for Dan to move forward with his own band. They played a showcase here earlier in the week and created quite a stir.

The band will be Ron Stewart on banjo, Justin Moses on fiddle, Barry Bales on bass, Adam Steffey on mandolin and Dan on guitar. They are headed into the studio almost immediately after IBMA, with a release on Rounder Records expected very early in 2008.

Adam will continue doing shows with Mountain Heart at least through the end of this year.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m.: Thanks to Barry Bales for catching my earlier error - Ron Stewart is on banjo and Justin Moses on fiddle. That’s my lesson not to post anything after 1:00 a.m. at IBMA with precious little sleep!

Rebel Records has reissued two more classic out-of-print recordings as download-only releases.

First up is a Lonesome River Band album from 1988, one which many recent fans of the band may learn about for the first time. Saturday Night, Sunday Morning came out on LP several years before the band took the bluegrass world by storm with Carrying The Tradition, but featured the drive and agreesive style that later (and current) editions of the band perfected.

This release featured founding members Tim Austin on guitar and Jerry McMillan on bass, along with Brian Fessler on banjo and Adam Steffey on mandolin. As you might guess from the title, this project features a mix of secular and spiritual material, with Adam’s instrumental take on Daybreak In Dixie.

You can sample the tracks or purchase the music in iTunes.

Makin’ Tracks by The McPreake Brothers was first released in 1983 on County Records - the last of the three McPeake projects for Rebel/County. By this time, the three brothers (Dewey, Larry and Mike) had established themselves as one of the premiere bluegrass vocal groups of their day.

Living in Southwest Virginia as I do, there were many opportunities to see them perform live, but they never toured far from their homes near Wytheville, VA, and their fine harmony was kept a secret from many bluegrass fans around the world - other than from these fine recordings.

Check out this valuable reissue on iTunes.

We had posted last month with news about AcuTab’s Adam Stefffey’s first-ever mandolin DVD. At the time we indicated that it would be available on June 12, but the release has been delayed until June 25.

To atone for the delay, AcuTab is offering a special offer for the first 300 orders, a free autographed Adam Steffey poster. This offer is only for direct orders through AcuTab, and they say that the posters will be shipped rolled in a tube to prevent damage in transit.

The new DVD is titled, Adam Steffey - My Approach To Bluegrass Mandolin, and includes 2 DVDs and a printed booklet. Between the two discs, the set runs for nearly four and half hours with instructional, tips and tunes from this 5 time winner of the IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year award.

The first DVD set offers purely instructional information, while the second has Adam teaching seven solos from his time as a member of Lonesome River Band, Alison Krauss & Union Station, and Mountain Heart.

From the AcuTab site:

Topics covered on Disk 1 note spacing pick attack tone and volume practicing building speed rhythm creating solos

Songs taught on Disk 2 East Tennessee Blues Cluck Old Hen Liza Jane Everytime You Say Goodbye No Place To Hide Daybreak In Dixie #6 Barn Dance

More details are available on the AcuTab web site, including several screen shots and a number of brief sample video clips, plus a larger image of the Steffey poster. Orders are being accepted now, shipping the week of June 25.

Adam Steffey’s first-ever instructional DVD for mandolin is due for release from AcuTab Publications on June 12. It will be a two-DVD set, entitled My Approach To Bluegrass Mandolin.

The first of the two disks focuses on Adam’s approach to the instrument, including his thoughts on proper technique and how to build “authentic” bluegrass-sounding mandolin solos for standard songs. He shows how he would create a simple meldoy-based solo for several popular jam session favorites, in a variety of keys.

The second disk has him teaching a number of his most-requested solos from his recordings with Alison Krauss & Union Station and Mountain Heart: Everytime You Say Goodbye, No Place To Hide, #6 Barn Dance, Cluck Old Hen, Liza Jane and several others.

There are no details up yet on the AcuTab site, but there is a link where you can request notification when they begin accepting orders.

My Approach To Bluegrass Mandolin will be available wherever bluegrass instructional DVDs are sold, on the AcuTab site, or from Adam at his live shows with Mountain Heart.

UPDATE: I uploaded a short video clip to my studio website. The clip features Adam performing Daybreak In Dixie with accompaniment from Barry Bales and Kenny Smith. Watch the clip here.

Mountain Heart is set to start work next week on their next CD - a live recording to be tracked at a number of shows over the next few weeks.

Mandolinist Adam Steffey told us this morning that they had long wanted to record a live project, and that fans had been asking at shows if such a project was available for years. He also suggested that the live CD will be a high energy effort - and their grassiest project in some time.

Adam insisted that it would be a true live album, not “a bunch of overdubs with an audience track.”

Fiddler Jim VanCleve says that even though they had been interested in doing a live album for years, the way this project has come to pass comes with an interesting story.

“We were asked to play the Ann Arbor folk festival, on the campus of Michigan University earlier this year. We went on right after actor Jeff Daniels did a short set, and right before John Prine. There were in excess of 8,000 on hand there, we were told, and it was a pretty hyped crowd.

When we got finished, the crowd response was one of the most incredible experiences of my career. I had to pull my ear monitors out. The crowd’s reaction to the set was so loud coming back through the mics onstage that it was hurting my ears! Anyways, we made the announcement we were going to be playing Ann Arbor’s home for great music, The Ark, a month or so later, and the place erupted. We sold all our CD’s there that night, and had about a thousand or so emails regarding the show. The Ark is one of the premiere music rooms in the country, indisputably.

A month later when we actually got to the Ark, we found out the show had been sold out for hours in advance, and was going to be standing room only. It was, again, one of the most special nights I’ve experienced in my whole career - just an insane response. We had tossed the idea of recording the show that night around a bit, but it didn’t come to pass. When I mentioned that to the crowd, they went nuts. So after the show, the owner approached us, and told us the show had been the best he’d ever seen at his venue, which floored us, of course! Then, he pursued the possibility of us recording there.

Fast forward about two months. The day after we actually booked the show, it was on the front page of the Ann Arbor newspaper. Who knew a bluegrass band could ever have such an impact on a big town like that?

So, here we go. We’re starting our first-ever, full length MH LIVE album. (more…)

We’ve written a good bit recently about Mountain Heart’s new vocalist, Josh Shilling, and the reaction to the band’s new sound. Today’s edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel has an interview with Mountain Heart mandolinist Adam Stefey about this very topic.

Adam talks about the recent departure of founding member Steve Gulley, and how they came to bring Josh into the band. He also touches on the reaction of bluegrass fans to the change, with an allusion to the way some hardcore grassers look at them.

“Like any band change, it may take a year for people to get used to it. People who are real traditional bluegrass fans won’t like it, but they didn’t like our band before. It’s different to hear a different voice, but he’s doing a great job. I guess everything worked out the way it’s supposed to.”

Read the whole article online.

Mountain Heart is also performing live on the radio today (3/2) in Knoxville. You can hear them via live streaming at the WDVX web site at 12:00 noon (EST) when they visit WDVX’s Blue Plate Special.

AcuTab has announced two new bluegrass instructional DVDs for release this spring, one each for banjo and mandolin.

First up will be Bluegrass Banjo Master Class, featuring Bill Evans. This will be the fourth installment in AcuTab’s popular Power Pickin’ series, which to this point had been wholly dedicated to playing bluegrass banjo backup.

The new DVD has Bill going over a wide range of banjo techniques, focusing on the common errors and problems that he has found popping up most frequently in both private lessons and workshops. These include detailed anaysis of right and left hand positioning, pick attack and posture. He also demonstrates some of the most common licks and phrases in the Scruggs style repertoire, and how making simple changes to these licks can expand your own bag of licks, and start you on further explorations of your own.

Bluegrass Banjo Master Class will include material of interest to relatively new pickers, as well as seasoned players, and is expected in mid-to-late March. Anyone wishing to receive an email notice when the DVD is available, or when more details are posted on the AcuTab site, can request notification at acutab.com.

Serious students of the mandolin will celebrate this one - an AcuTab DVD featuring Adam Steffey, Mountain Heart’s mando monster. Adam will teach and demonstrate a number of tunes and solos he has recorded over the years, and discuss his approach to the mandolin, building solos, working in the studio and playing bluegrass mandolin accompaniment.

There is a discussion over at Mandolin Cafe where AcuTab solicited input from forum members as to which tunes and techniques they would like to see covered in the Steffey DVD. The video shoot is scheduled for February 21, so there is still time to get your suggestions and requests in. Do so by contributing at Mandolin Cafe, or by email to AcuTab.

You can also request notification by email when the Steffey DVD is ready at the AcuTab site.

Some of the more popular bluegrass instrumental projects of recent years have been in a Pinecastle series which came to be called the Bluegrass Annual projects, as each was designated by the year in which it was released. Seven CDs were eventually included, starting with Bluegrass ‘95, and concluding with Bluegrass 2001.

The series had a largely accidental genesis, initially recorded as a solo project for Clay Jones, now guitarist with Mountain Heart. When that project was finished, Clay made a decision to work outside of music, and Pinecastle was prepared to shelve the recording, seeing no venue to promote it. Scott Vestal, a long time friend of Clay’s who played banjo on the project, intervened with the label and convinced them to release it as an instrumental CD so that the artists who recorded with Clay (Adam Steffey, Wayne Benson, Aubrey Haynie, Barry Bales), could at least offer it for sale at their shows.

Scott was quoted in an August 2000 article in Banjo NewsLetter about this, and how he came to take charge of creating and producing an instrumental release for them for each of the next six years.

“I talked with Tom Riggs at Pinecastle and suggested that we release it in some form with a generic title so that at least the guys on the record could sell it at shows. I just threw out the name, Bluegrass ‘95 and he liked it. No one expected it to sell so well but, when it did, Pinecastle turned the concept over to me and asked me to do one each year.”

Each was successful in its own right, but as the CD inventory for each title sold through, Pinecastle has elected to let them go out of print. Bluegrass 2001 is the only one still available as an audio CD.

They released a compilation from those CDs in the summer of 2005, called Ultimate Pickin, which featured 20 tracks taken from those recordings, and now a second compilation is out with a bit broader range that includes more tracks from those popular CDs.

The newly released More Ultimate Pickin also contains 20 tracks, taken from the aforementioned Vestal-produced projects, and other Pinecastle CDs like Bobby Osborne & Jesse McReynolds’ Masters Of The Mandolin, among others. A full track listing and a few audio samples can be found on the Pinecastle site.

You can still obtain the individual Bluegrass Annual projects as digital downloads in the iTunes Music Store. Follow the links below to find them in iTunes.

Over the weekend I came across a post on Ron Block’s website stating that overdubs are almost complete on what appears to be a new solo project from Ron.

Overdubs continue in my basement studio. I’m looking to finish all my parts (acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, editing) by the time AKUS goes on the road for the first half of November. In late November I’ll finish up with fiddle and viola (Alison), lap steel/dobro (Jerry Douglas), some mandolin overdubs by Adam Steffey that we weren’t able to get to in August, and harmony vocals by various folks. I’ll also be doing preliminary mixing (mostly just volume rides). I’m looking to have Gary Paczosa mix by the end of December and have the record released by mid to late April.

Some of the people involved in making the recording:

• Barry Bales (bass), Dan Tyminski (guitar, vocals)
• Eric Uglum (production assistance)
• Jerry Douglas (dobro, lap steel)
• Viktor Krauss (bass)
• Gary Paczosa (engineer)
• Adam Steffey (mandolin, mandola)

With a line up like that it should be a recording worth listening to. We’ll keep you informed as we find out more.