Not to be outdone by the other contests running this month, fiddler Casey Driessen has created one of his own.

The promotion, which he is calling a Full Spectrum Music Giveaway, is to celebrate today’s (5/12) release of Driessen’s new CD, Oog. If you win, you’ll not only get autographed copies of his two solo projects (Oog and 3D), Casey will also send you free copies of 20 other CDs on which he has played.

To enter, simply visit the contest page on Casey’s web site, and leave a comment. Entries will be accepted until midnight on May 20, so don’t be late!

Casey explains it all below (double click to play).

Fiddler Casey Driessen has presented to the music world as something of a stylistic enigma. As a fiddler he is equally well trained in the bluegrass and old time traditions, and he has a music degree from The Berklee College Of Music.

He has toured as a solo artist and band leader, as well as a sideman. He is a member of Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet and is touring now with Darrell Scott.

Driessen’s latest CD, Oog, is scheduled for release on May 12. It offers a wealth of beautiful and fascinating music, but isn’t much help in pinning him down or boxing his sound into any neat classification. Casey handles fiddle and vocal chores, with help from Darrell Scott on guitar and pedal guitar, Viktor Krauss on bass, Brian Siskind on lap steel and synth, and Matt Chamberlain on percussion.

For a glimpse into Driessen’s musical personality, he created this video fiddle quiz for our readers…

The resulting track on Oog is a hoot. The backwards melody played in reverse takes it the first time through, with a back’ards accompaniment used throughout, duet style.

Casey also agreed to let us include samples of a couple other tracks from the CD, which we offer here, along with his comments from the liner notes.

Uncontinental Breakfast  -  Listen now:   

While teaching at Mark O’Connor’s Strings Conference I had a life changing musical experience‚Ķand those don’t come along often. One of the other instructors was Dr. M. Manjunath, a South Indian violinist. He played a solo concert, cross legged, on top of a table, improvising nonstop for 30 minutes. He took me on a ride that was one of the most beautiful and amazing performances I’ve ever witnessed, playing in ways I had not imagined possible. The next day I took a lesson with him. Soon afterwards while on the road, hungry and stuck in a hotel room one morning, I wrote this melody. Thank you Dr. M. Manjunath. (more…)

Jordan Tice is a young guitarist who is releasing a third CD under his name at only 21 years of age.

Long Story, recently released on Patuxent Music, features 10 original instrumental compositions performed by a group of stellar progressive string musicians. Jordan recorded his first solo project, No Place Better, in 2005 and was part of a trio album (Corbett/Chrisman/Tice) in 2007 with banjoist Wes Corbett and hammered dulcimer player Simon Chrisman.

This new solo release shows not only an obvious grasp of acoustic guitar technique, but a fresh compositional voice as well. It is not presented as a “guitar album” – with track-after-track of fiddle-tuney flatpicking – nor does it incorporate the odd vocal number with an eye towards radio play. In fact, the CD is more of a statement about Jordan’s original music than it is his guitar playing, and it is the tunes that shine, both for their clever melodies, and as improvisational vehicles for Tice and his fellow pickers.

The opening melodies are as likely to be presented by the dobro, fiddle or banjo as the guitar, which Tice had in mind when he created the tunes for this album.

“I did write many of the melodies with other instruments in mind. One thing that ties most of the music I love together is that the elements that make up the music are veiled behind the flow of the music. My goal was to make a record with a bluegrass band that accomplishes this rather than to highlight the guitar and ignore the abundance of textures and sounds the bluegrass band is capable of producing.”

Jordan’s tunes range from a fiery fiddle tune form (Sofia) to jazzy, new acoustic ballads (Chincoteague), and even an orchestrated, scored piece (The Colony).

Sofia really jumped out at me on first hearing, and it hasn’t diminished a bit upon multiple listenings.

Listen now:   

“Sofia was written a few years ago pretty quickly. Id say it’s the most straight forward on the record in that its just a tune that we play and improvise on with minimal arrangement. I named it after Sofia, Bulgaria after a visit there last summer. I just liked the simple and pretty sound of ’sofia’ and figured it fit.” (more…)

The July 21, 2008 issue of Newsweek magazine included a feature on banjo player, vocalist and songwriter Abigail Washburn and her current touring and recording venue, Sparrow Quartet.

The magazine’s Brian Braiker caught up with Abby and fellow quartet members B?©la Fleck, Casey Driessen and Ben Sollee at a live performance in New York’s Battery Park, where she shared how she came to a career in music after studying Chinese in college.

But somewhere along the way, Washburn, who also sang in college, picked up a banjo for largely the same reason she decided to learn Chinese‚Äîit was hard. She mastered the old-timey clawhammer style well enough that, by the time she was considering a career in international law, a trip to Nashville turned into a much longer stay. There she cut a demo consisting of the first two songs she’d written, one in English, the other‚Äîbecause, hell, why not?‚Äîin Mandarin. Eventually, the allure of woodshedding in Tennessee trumped the corporate path waiting abroad. “Am I going to use my skills to represent Anheuser-Busch and Payless Shoes?” companies she had consulted for, “or am I going to have something to say?” she asks. She handed her demo to banjo virtuoso B?©la Fleck at a party, who listened on the drive home. He says he became so absorbed that he got pulled over for speeding. “She wasn’t doing anything fancy,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “There was just something pure and beautiful about what she did.”

You can read the full piece at Newsweek.com, where they also have an exclusive video of the Quartet performing Captain, a piece from their current CD, Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet (audio samples on iTunes).

HT: Katy Daley at WAMU’s Bluegrass Country