The holliday season is upon us once again and it’s time for a new bluegrass Christmas CD. Christmas Grass Vol. 3 is great addition to the iTunes collection. I personally enjoy Christmas music very much, especially when it’s this well done.

The subtitle for the CD is Featuring 3 Fox Drive and Friends. That should give you a clue as to the quality of singing on this recording. Astral is the only word I can come up with that comes close. Kim, Barb, and Joel Fox provide the harmonies all through the CD, and they are certainly out of this world. The Fox family members (3 Fox Drive) also handle lead vocal duties on good number of tunes, including O Holy Night, White Christmas, and others. Their version of O Holy Night is easily one of the best I’ve ever heard.

The instrumental performances on this recording are fantastic. Tasteful, mature playing is exhibited throughout by such illuminaries as Darrin Vincent, Byron House, Bryan Sutton, Cody Kilby, Adam Steffey, Aubrey Haynie, Joe CaverLee, Rob Ickes, Joel Fox and Eric Darken.

In addition to the instrumental guests, the singing of the Fox Family is augmented by a few noteworthy guest vocalists as well. (more…)

Charlie Daniels got his start on pop radio in 1973 with Uneasy Rider, a tongue-in-cheek story of a long-haired country boy on a cross country trip who ran into some trouble in a Mississippi tavern. It was delivered in a talking blues style, and served as a stylistic predecessor for his later mega-hit, Devil Went Down To Georgia.

Over the next 35 years Daniels has recorded southern rock, Gospel and even bluegrass, defying any attempts to pigeonhole his music.

His newest release, Deuces, due October 9, is a set of vocal duets with some of the biggest names in country, bluegrass and pop music. Charlie sings with Dolly Parton, Del McCoury, Brooks & Dunn and Marty Stuart - and even does one with Earl, Gary and Randy Scruggs.

Deuces will be released on Charlie’s Blue Hat Records, and distributed by Koch.

The internet is all abuzz right now talking about the voice of Cyndi Wheeler. Cyndi played the pre-awards party at IBMA. The party was sponsored by BMI. Cyndi performed with Blue Highway, along with Sam Bush’s rhythm section, as her band. She covered standards like September Song and What a Difference a Day Makes.

Ed Morris at CMT wrote a piece about the awards and mentioned Cyndi’s performance at the pre-show party.

The highlight of that event was a performance by singer Cyndi Wheeler, who, backed by Blue Highway, beamed out irresistibly jazzy incarnations of such pop standards as “Dreamer’s Holiday,” “September Song” and “What a Difference a Day Makes.” She is produced by Scott Rouse, who also produces Blue Highway. An album of these tunes is due out soon.

John over at The Sheep’s Crib is also talking about Cyndi and had this to say.

You’re a hard-hearted meanie if you don’t like this voice.

Cyndi has been singing duets with bluegrass artists for some time now. Her fist, as far as I am aware, was a duet with Del McCoury on the tune I’ll Be Home For Christmas from the CD Christmas On The Mountain. She also joined Charlie Daniels for a duet rendition of Softly and Tenderly on his CD Songs From The Longleaf Pines. More recently she joined Blue Highway on their latest CD, Marbletown, for a duet with Tim Stafford on the song Quarter Moon.

Her upcoming album, which producer Scott Rouse tells me will be out sometime in the spring, features a duet with Ricky Skaggs on the title track, Tonight You Belong To Me. The song features the two voices with accompaniment from Ronnie McCoury’s mandolin.

You can hear several cuts from her upcoming CD on her website at CyndiWheeler.com.

In episode #6 of The GrassCast we share with you a conversation John had with Charlie Daniels. John spoke with Charlie over the phone just recently. They spoke about Charlie’s bluegrass gospel CD Songs From The Longleaf Pines, as well as a project Charlie is involved in called Operation Heartstrings.

This GrassCast is 10 minutes in length and the file download size is 9 MB.

Direct Download: ep6_charlie_daniles.mp3
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NOTE: This post is open to comments, so please share your thoughts about Charlie’s CD, or Operation Heartstrings here. Also feel free to share with us your thoughts about The GrassCast in general.

As John mentioned in his earlier post we recorded an interview with Charlie Daniels for this week’s edition of The GrassCast. Prior to the interview I had a chance to email a few questions to Scott Rouse the producer. At the time I was just gathering background information for the interview, but we felt Scott’s comments were interesting and valuable enough to include them as an introduction to the podcast. At some point we’ll conduct an interview with Scott for The GrassCast. For now, here’s my question and answer with him about Charlie’s CD.
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Country music superstar Charlie Daniels was in the news over the Thanksgiving weekend for his work with Operation Heartstrings, an effort to provide music for US military personnel overseas. On a trip to visit and entertain the troops earlier this year, Daniels found many service members who played or enjoyed music, but were hampered by the scarcity of resources available to them, or their inability or unwillingness to bring their personal instruments along to Iraq or Afghanistan. Through the generosity of a number of American companies, musical instruments, CDs, DVDs, laptop computers and CD/DVD players have been donated and distributed to men and women in uniform to help them ease the loneliness and isolation that service away from home can bring.

Our friends at Gibson donated 100 Epiphone guitars for this effort, and we have a photo (below) of Charlie Daniels with Gibson CEO Henry Juskiewicz and Major General Gus Hartgett of the TN National Guard as the guitars were being loaded for delivery to service men and women abroad.

Many of our readers recognize Charlie Daniels from his multiple hits on country and pop radio, but many not realize that not only does he have deep roots in bluegrass music, but had also released a bluegrass gospel CD earlier this year, entitled Songs From The Longleaf Pines. The CD features some riveting performances from bluegrass legends like Earl Scruggs and Mac Wiseman, along with members of The Del McCoury Band.

Charlie includes some gospel favorites like How Great Thou Art and bluegrass gospel classics like Walkin’ In Jerusalem, Working On a Building and The Old Crossroads. His vocal delivery is more familiar Charlie Daniels - a mix of singing and recitation - than typical bluegrass, but his passion for the music and his sincerity in the message is inescapable. Produced by Scott Rouse, whose recent credits include stellar work on Blue Highway’s Marbletown, the Daniels CD is sonically stellar and the arrangements are clever and engaging.

If you have a Charlie Daniels fan on your Christmas list, this CD might provide a perfect introduction to bluegrass music. There don’t appear to be any audio samples available on the Charlie Daniels web site, but we did find some here.

We had an opportunity to discuss both the genesis of Operation Heartstrings and his love for bluegrass music with Charlie Daniels last week, and this interview will be available later this week on The GrassCast - our weekly audio podcast.

If you - or your company - would like to support Operation Heartstrings, you can make a donation via the Stars For Stripes web site.