Mountain Heart has a big show tomorrow (1/16) in Knoxville with Tony Rice, and they’ll be doing a live radio show on WDVX at noon while they’re in town.

Tony won’t be able to make the radio show (Blue Plate Special), but guitar monster David Bromberg is also on the bill, and a Mountain Heart/Bromberg jam is expected towards the end of the program.

Blue Plate Special airs live, in-studio performances at noon on weekdays, and on Fridays moves to The Square Room, with a capacity to seat 400 people. Tickets are free to the public, so if you are near Knoxville, check it out.

If not, the show airs at 102.9 FM, and can also be heard worldwide via live streaming online.

Mountain Heart has been doing shows with Rice since last summer, and have performances set up throughout 2009 including major festivals like Merlefest. Of course, with Tony unable to sing, MH vocalists Josh Shilling and Barry Abernathy handle the vocal chores on the classic Rice repertoire.

Here’s an amateur video shot at the 2008 IBMA Fan Fest of Tony and Mountain Heart doing Free Born Man.

You can check their full tour schedule online.

The fall 2007 edition of Fretboard Journal is in the mail to subscribers and will soon be available at music dealers and Barnes & Noble. This edition features a cover story on banjo master Earl Scruggs.

The story is appropriately titled “The Banjo That Changed The World.” The article weighs in at a hefty 18 pages. For those of you who aren’t keen on a lot of reading, don’t worry, fully 8 of those pages are dedicated to high quality photographs. If you’ve ever held a copy of Fretboard Journal in your hand, you’ll understand when I say the photographs are spectacular.

The ten pages of text are well worth reading though, so don’t skip them just to look at the pictures! With lots of history, stories told in the first person by Earl himself, and remembrances from other players and historians, the writing is just as good as the photography. This article is a must read for all fans of Earl Scruggs.

Scruggs isn’t the only bluegrass personality featured in the issue though. Another article of interest is a lengthy piece on guitar player, and fiddle expert, David Bromberg. Again, this article is complete with stunning photos, first hand interviews, and lots of history.

A shorter, but equally interesting, article about Old Growth Rims (built by Sullivan Banjo) devotes plenty of discussion to the hardships of trying to work the old hard-rock maple, from the floor of an 1870 factory, into banjo rims. These rims are available for after market purchase, but also come standard in Sullivan Banjo models such as the new Terry Baucom model.

Eclectic folk/blues artist David Bromberg is due for a new CD. Though he has released some band projects, a retrospective and some live sets, he has not had a new studio project as a solo artist since 1990.

Appleseed Records has announced that a new Bromberg project is set for a February 2007 release. Entitled Try Me One More Time, it will be a solo project in the truest sense, featuring only David and his guitar. The material will be a mixed bag of roots music styles, including bluegrass, blues, ragtime and folk.

Many followers of acoustic music will recall David from his high profile work as a sideman in the 1970s, touring and recording with artists like Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and others, and from his popular solo performances at folk festivals all over the world.

Appleseed’s site offers this capsule overview of his life since that time.

After touring and recording extensively throughout the ’70s, a somewhat burned-out Bromberg stepped off the music industry merry-go-round in 1980, moving from San Francisco to Chicago to study violin making. Lured back to his native East Coast two decades later by an invitation to serve as an artist-in-residence in Wilmington, Del., Bromberg has been operating David Bromberg Fine Violins, a retail shop, in recent years and playing an increasing number of concerts, most frequently as a solo performer.

The photo of David above shows him with his signature series Martin guitar, the David Bromberg M-42 model, introduced earlier this year.