This afternoon’s (10/1) official IBMA showcase offered a number of surprises - new faces, even with familiar acts. Brance and I were there to catch it all while we grabbed a plate or two of “free food.”

Alecia Nugent was first up, with an almost entirely new band since I saw her last. Thomas Wywrot was the only constant, but he has switched to guitar from banjo. Chris Wade has just come in on banjo, with Jennifer Strickland on bass and Alex Hibbitts on mandolin.

She was featuring material from her upcoming CD, Hillbilly Goddess. Alecia and the band looked like anything but, dressed sharply, and performing the powerful contemporary bluegrass and country-tinged ballads that marked her previous project, Little Girl And A Big Four Lane.

Lonesome River Band was scheduled to come on next, but a last minute changed was announced and Sawmill Road took the stage. With so much emphasis on younger acts at IBMA - and rightly so - it’s great to see a new band made up of experienced pros selected to showcase.

The band consists of Bruce Johnson on fiddle, Steve Spurgin on bass and lead vocals, Charlie Edsall on guitar, Dick Brown on banjo and Mark Miracle on mandolin. They were likewise highlighting their new CD, a self-titled debut, and the show was filled with great songs and clever arrangements.

Spurgin’s voice is seasoned and strong, and the band showed their veteran status providing just the appropriate level of acompaniment.

They finished their set to a standing ovation.

When Lonesome River Band emerged at last, guitarist Brandon Rickman was nowhere to be seen. Regular mandolin man Andy Ball had the guitar strapped on, and former mandolinist Jeff Parker was back - at least for this show. Litterally moments before their set, Brandon was taken ill and Jeff stepped in with no more than a few minutes notice. Talk about a pro!

Hats off to Andy Ball as well, who not only managed the guitar spot like he did it every night, but shouldered all the lead singing as well. New listeners unfamiliar with the band would never have guessed that an emergency switch had been made. Longtime banjo picker Sammy Shelor was peeling the paint off the roof and Mike Hartgrove on fiddle and Mike Anglin on bass turned in the sort of powerful performance that has defined the band’s sound for the past 25 years.

LRB has a new CD as well, No Turning Back, but without Brandon, they weren’t able to feature much of that material - though Ball offered a strong version of We Couldn’t Tell, an especially apt choice, telling the story of the stock market crash on 1929 and it’s impact on a poor rural family.

All in all a great show from LRB, showing what flexibility and multi-talented players mean in our business.

Recently we told you about the announcement of the Josh Williams Band. Josh has since let us know some more specifics of his plans for the 2008 festival season.

For the next two weekends, Josh will be performing with the Alecia Nugent Band. He’ll do shows with her on February 9, 10, 15 and 16.

Josh’s band will then debut at the Station Inn in Nashville, TN on February 23, 2008. Josh’s management team will begin considering booking offers for festivals and shows during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, at that time.

But if you want to see Josh play, you’ll have plenty of opportunities, as he will be filling in with the Larry Stephenson Band through the remainder of the 2008 season. Josh said he anticipates very few scheduling conflicts between the Larry Stephenson Band and his own band.

Downtown Nashville will soon become home to the 2007 CMA Music Festival. The event is held annually in downtown Nashville, TN and features over 70 hours of concerts in four days. Each year upwards of 160,000 country music fans attend the event to hear, meet, and interact with their favorite country music artists. This year’s event is schedule to be held June 7-10, 2007.

While the festival is mainly about country music, bluegrass does have a presence. One such presence is the Bluegrass Booth in the exhibit hall. Dave Burley hosts the booth and encourages all bluegrass fans in attendance to stop by for a shake and howdy.

The artist lineup for the event also includes a number of bluegrass performers. I looked over the list and plucked out a few names that caught my eye, but this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of bluegrass artists at the event, just a sampling. The complete list is available here.

• Alecia Nugent
• Cherryholmes
• The Grascals
• The Infamous Stringdusters
• Carolina Road
• Kassie DePaiva (more info here)

A ticket for the four day event will set you back $110 at least, with higher prices for better seats. Tickets are available online through TicketMaster.com or by calling the festival box office at 1-800-CMA-FEST (262-3378).

Saturday night I took the wife and attended the Alecia Nugent concert in nearby New Castle, Virginia. It should be no surprise that Alecia put on a great show, she’s won awards recently from both IBMA and SPBGMA for her singing. She’s also a fine entertainer. And what a band! With Andy Falco on guitar, Ashby Frank on mandolin, Thomas Wywrot on banjo, and Jennifer Strickland on bass added to Alecia’s vocals, you’ve got a recipe for some great bluegrass music.

The first set opened with the Osborne Brothers standby Listening To The Rain, and a fair number of other standards were sprinkled throughout both sets making for a pleasant mixture of traditional and original tunes. Breaking from accepted practice, Alecia honored a request and ended the first set with a slow sad song from her self titled first CD. The title of the song is Paper and Pen. If you haven’t heard it, you can find audio samples on Rounder’s website. Be warned, it’s a sad one.

Let me give you my impressions about the band Alecia has touring with her now.

I’ve known Andy Falco for several years and have been a fan of his guitar playing since I first heard him set pick to string. Saturday night Andy got an enthusiastic response from the crowd on nearly every guitar solo. There is just something about his bluesy, downstroke driven, aggressive style that has something of Monroe’s mandolin style in it.

Ashby Frank has been a good mandolin player for a long time and he’s only 23, but Saturday night I was really struck by the economy of movement in his right had. I was sitting in the front row and could really see the ease with which he played. It’s very enjoyable to watch a musician with that kind of control over their instrument. I rest easy in the knowledge that bluegrass music will continue to grow, expand, and excel into the future in the capable hands of young pickers like this.

Thomas Wywrot I had known as a guitar player, but I was quite impressed with his ability on the banjo. He was driving and aggressive without being overbearing. He worked the mic like a pro making plenty of room for the guitar and mandolin in the mix. During the first set he played an original instrumental of his own composition that I didn’t catch the name of, but it was an enjoyable tune that got the crowd stirred up nicely.

Jennifer Strickland I didn’t know before Saturday night. I was pleasantly surprised to find she is Missouri girl. Having grown up outside KC myself, I always get a kick out of meeting another Missourian on the bluegrass circuit. She did a great job on the bass and harmony vocals all evening.

And that’s just the band. Alecia herself lived up to her title as the Traditional Female Vocalist of the Year, as recently awarded by SPBGMA. If you’re a fan of good bluegrass singing, you need to make a point to go hear Alecia.

Overall this was a great show. The material was good, the performance was great, the MC work (shared by the entire band) was funny and entertaining, and the whole experience was enjoyable. If Alecia and band happen to be in your area (tour schedule is on her website), I encourage to take the opportunity to go hear some fine bluegrass music from this award winning singer and her band.

We had posted earlier this month about the release of Alecia Nugent’s new CD, A Little Girl… A Big Four Lane, on Rounder, and also featured an interview with Alecia on The GrassCast (our weekly audio podcast).

At that time, we indicated that no audio samples from the new release were available online, and that we would update everyone here when they appeared. They are now up on the Rounder web site for anyone interested in a taste of the new CD

We mentioned last week in The GrassCast episode #17 that Alecia Nugent’s sophomore release for Rounder Records, A Little Girl…A Big Four-Lane was set to hit the street on February 28, 2006. Alecia discussed in her GrassCast interview (listen online) that she would be cruising the high seas when the CD hit the streets, but that she was eager to see it released.

The new CD was produced by Carl Jackson, who has been instrumental in Alecia’s success, and features guest performances from Alison Krauss, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Doyle Lawson, Rob Ickes and Cia Cherryholmes.

No audio up yet on either Rounder’s or Alecia’s web sites, but that will surely be added shortly. We’ll update when we find some audio.

Episode #17 of The GrassCast features two interviews. The first is with singer Alecia Nugent. We talk about her new CD A Little Girl…A Big Four Lane. The second interview is with The Lovell Sisters. We talk with all three sisters about their CD as well as their journey to bluegrass.

This GrassCast is 13 minutes in length and the file download size is 12MB.

Listen now:
Direct Download: ep17_nugent_lovell.mp3
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Award for a group or individual, new to the national bluegrass scene, which has made considerable advances artistically and/or commercially during the eligibility period. The band or individual should be performing under its/his/her name on a regular basis and not have more than two previous finalist nominations for this award. (Award to each group member or individual):

The nominees for Emerging Artist Of The Year for 2005 are:

Review past recipients of this award.