Hats off to Aubrey Haynie, who was awarded the Top Fiddle Player Of The Year trophy on Sunday (4/5) at the Academy Of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas.

Bryan Sutton, Randy Kohrs and Rob Ickes also received nominations this year.

When the complete list of nominees for the 2009 Academy Of Country Music Awards were announced yesterday (2/11), a number of bluegrass pickers showed up on the list.

No… not that list (the one with all the Nashville glitterati in their sparkly clothes). They appear on the list of musicians who support all the big stars and make their records sound so good, which the ACM describes as the “Off Camera Nominations.”

Aubrey Haynie is nominated for Top Fiddle Player Of The Year, Bryan Sutton for Top Guitarist Of The Year, and Randy Kohrs and Rob Ickes for Top Specialty Instrument(s) Player Of The Year.

The awards will be presented on April 5 in Las Vegas, broadcast live on CBS at 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT).

Congrats to all of our guys for their nominations, and best of luck in Vegas!

The Violin Shop is a well-established music outlet on Old Hickory Boulevard in Nashville, Tennessee, owned by Fred Carpenter. He has been a violin/fiddle player for over 42 years and has over 27 years of experience in the violin and bow trade, including years at the workbench.

Carpenter has worked with the Tony Rice Unit and with Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band. He is a recording artist in his own right.

In Spring 2005, Carpenter built a 50-seat concert room onto the side of his shop. In the Fall of that year he began promoting a series of concerts featuring, what else, fiddle players, and top names have rosined a bow there too. All concerts have been recorded on video.

It is the product of some of these first recordings that is featured on the first of the Fiddler Masters DVDs.

Appearing on this collection are Andy Leftwich (of Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder), old-time fiddle master Bruce Molsky, Jim VanCleve (of Mountain Heart), Bobby Hicks (possibly the top single fiddler to play both the bluegrass and western swing styles) and Aubrey Haynie (a regular with The Time Jumpers, a group made up of touring and studio musicians who enjoy jamming with each other at the Station Inn).

Molsky plays five pieces solo, including Last Of Gallahan and Peg & Awl, both on the fiddle, but switches to guitar for the tune Brothers & Sisters and the song Poor Cowboy. I cannot say how it was on the night that Molsky appeared at The Violin Shop, but the guitar interludes provide an enjoyable variation within the context of the video.

The other four fiddlers appear accompanied by their own pick-up band chosen from Byron House, Cody Kilby, Wyatt Rice, Charlie Cushman, Alan Bibey, Adam Steffey, Kent Blanton, Clay Jones, Ron Stewart, Jason Moore and Steve Gulley. It would be unfair to single out any of the support musicians for praise; all shine very brightly. While the setting is a showcase for fiddlers, each person called upon to take a break shows how superb they are at their craft.

VanCleve steps into spotlight on four occasions, performing his own #6 Barn Dance, the rollicking opener, Ride The Wild Turkey, and a barn-storming version of Big Mon. (more…)

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 ‚Äò95 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.