Claire Lynch has announced that Matt Wingate is her new guitar player. He steps into the void left when Claire’s long-time guitar man Jim Hurst stepped aside, leaving young Mr. Wingate with some extra large shoes to fill.

But based on his resume, and the fact that Lynch chose him after an exhaustive round of auditions, it would seem that he is more than up to the task. Matt won the Merlefest guitar championship in 1997 when he was 15 years old, and has spent time on the road with The Lovell Sisters, Valerie Smith, and The Greencards. He learned to play as a teen in his family’s band, and released his debut solo CD, A Good Dream, in 2008.

Wingate graced the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine in the Spring of 2009, and the accompanying profile praised his high level of musicianship and his considerable skills on a variety of stringed instruments. Matt is also a fine singer, and will contribute as a vocalist in the Claire Lynch Band as well.

Claire has come up with a clever way to welcome Matt into the band. She is inviting all her fans and friends to submit a welcome message online. By passing along your message, you’ll also be entered into a drawing to win a copy of A Good Dream.

If you are not familiar with this talented young musician, here’s a video of him twinning with Brian Stephens on Salt Creek. Matt is on the left.

The Claire Lynch Band is Jason Thomas on fiddle and mandolin, Mark Schatz on bass and banjo, Wingate on guitar, mandolin and resonator guitar, and of course, Claire Lynch on guitar and lead vocals. You can find their tour schedule online.

The bluegrass and acoustic guitar world has been buzzing this past two years, awaiting the publication of Still Inside – The Tony Rice Story.

This authorized biography of the legendary guitarist and vocalist, written by Tim Stafford and Caroline Wright, has suffered its share of birth pangs and has been delayed a number of times on the way to the delivery room. First projected for a 2007 release, it has now been finally and officially slated to hit on April 12, with a grand premier during Merlefest 2010.

What sets this book apart from most musical biographies is that it follows Rice’s life on multiple tracks simultaneously. It is laid out chronologically, as you would expect with any biography, dividing Tony’s life into five stages, followed by a detailed look at his offstage work in the music business, and a chapter on what sets his guitar technique apart from what had come before.

A chapetr list follows:

• Chapter 1: Hard Love/Origins, Birth-1970
• Chapter 2: Summer Wages/Bluegrass Years, 1970-1975
• Chapter 3: Gasology/Jazz Cats And Dawgs, 1975-1982
• Chapter 4: Units Of Measure/The New Acoustic Age, 1979-1988
• Chapter 5: Night Flyer/Transitions, 1989-2009
• Chapter 6: The Man Behind The Curtain/Tony Rice Offstage
• Chapter 7: Me and My Guitar:  Part I, The Antique

Each chapter starts with a section called Tony’s Story, where Rice tells the story of this part of his life in his own words. That is then followed by testimony from others (friends, family, fans, and fellow musicians) who were crucial during that period. Each section also features a segment called On The Road with Tony, where Wright offers a revealing look into Tony’s life from her travels with him on tour.

In the final chapter, Stafford examines Tony as a musician, with the keen eye that only another world class guitarist muster. It includes a detailed analysis of his technique, and a look at the Clarence White D-28 herringbone which has become so closely associated with his music. An introduction from Ricky Skaggs, who performed with Tony in the mid-70s with JD Crowe & The New South, gets things started.

Given Rice’s stature in acoustic music, it’s no surprise to find quotes and remembrances from the likes of J.D. Crowe, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, David Grisman, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Ricky Skaggs, and Linda Ronstadt. Tony’s surviving family members share a wealth of memories, and the book details the sorrows and tragedies that have marked his family life.

Stafford tells us that Still Inside is a remarkably personal memoir, particularly in light of Tony’s reputation for privacy. Further, he says  thatit has been Rice’s insistince on getting every detail right that had delayed publication until this spring.

An email list is being assembled online should you wish to be notified when pre-orders are being accepted. It will be a big day for the very many Tony Rice fans out there.

Mel Bay Publications has a pair of book/CD combos that should be of interest to students of the bluegrass music – guitarists and mandolinists in particular.

Flatpicking Up The Neck, from Jeff Troxel, is designed to assist beginning and intermediate guitar players to find their way around in higher positions on the fingerboard. Using familiar fiddle tunes like Billy in the Low Ground, Arkansas Traveler, Flowers of Edinburgh, Bill Cheatham and The Cuckoo’s Nest, Troxel shows how chords and scales can be the foundation for improvising up the neck.

The Mel Bay site describes the book (with audio CD) as…

• Thorough and practical approach to playing up the neck.
• Guitarists learn how melodies and chords work together.
• Invaluable concepts for arranging and improvisation.
• Tunes and variations provide practical application for the material.

See the table of contents and several sample pages at www.melbay.com.

The Mandolin Picker’s Guide To Bluegrass Improvisation by Jesper Rubner-Petersen offers 200 pages of explanation, exercises, tips and tricks to help unlock the mysteries of improvising for mando students – with an accompanying audio CD. It starts with an examination of basic music theory and the chord and scale intervals that are crucial to understanding how bluegrass music is played, and then begins to show how to build on these concepts to create your own solos.

Mel Bay sees the major themes of the book as:

• The pentatonic sound
• Scale and major-chord based improvising
• Double-stop improvisation
• Minor chords and Keys
• The blues sound
• Melody oriented improvisation
• Monroe Style
• Cross picking
• Hot licks
• How to simplify a lick

Again, more details and sample pages can be found online.

Stop me if you’ve heard this story before…

A talented young bluegrass picker makes a name for themself with regional groups, gets a shot at touring with some bigger acts, and moves to Nashville. Bigger things start to happen musically, but a new family seems more important and they decide to give up on the road life.

Sound familiar?

Well that is the story of Troy Engle, a crackerjack multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter who has spent time with Mark Newton, The Isaacs, Dale Ann Bradley and Patty Loveless. He was working with The Isaacs when his second child was born, and chose to seek his living in the studio, exercising his many skills and his entreprenuerial streak instead of his road shoes.

Troy started a company called Unplugged Demos, along with the similarly multi-talented Justin Carbone, to create quality studio demos for acoustic songwriters on a tight budget. Now he has launced an overdub business to make it easy for small home studios and low-budget projects to have him lay down instrumental tracks for their recordings.

This new venture is known as Acoustic Overdubs, and the web site explains how Troy can add banjo, mandolin, guitar, fiddle, resonator guitar, pedal steel and several other instruments to your track, quickly and for a very reasonable fee.

Get all the details online.