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…)
Rural Rhythm Records has been releasing some really good bluegrass in the last few years. They’ve also been working hard to make sure we all get to hear this great music. One of their efforts in that regard has been the creation of Fresh Cuts & Key Tracks, a radio sampler featuring singles from current and upcoming releases.
The second edition of this radio release was sent to Bluegrass Radio at the end of last week, so you DJs should be receiving it sometime soon. Rural Rhythm was kind enough to give us a sneak peek of the new tracks on the disc.
The disc contains five tracks, three of which are new tracks from upcoming releases.
Them Blues is the first single to be released from the new Lonesome River Band CD, No Turning Back. The CD is scheduled for release early next month. Fans of the LRB signature sound will certainly enjoy this new cut. I’ve embedded a YouTube video of them performing the track live on stage, at the end of this post. The audio doesn’t compare with the studio cut, but you’ll get the idea. Be listening for this one on your favorite bluegrass radio station later this week!
I Call It Gone is from the upcoming second album from Melonie Cannon, And The Wheels Turn. The album was co-produced by Ronnie Bowman and Buddy Cannon and features a very impressive line up of musicians. The CD is scheduled for release in early October.
Cindy Mae is an uptempo bluegrass number in the tradition of brother duets such as the Stanley Brothers. The Crowe Brothers (Josh and Wayne) deliver on this one. This track is from a newly recorded CD, Brothers-N-Harmony, scheduled for release in late September of 2008. The song was written by Cody Shuler of Pine Mountain Railroad. Anyone who likes good traditional brother harmony style bluegrass will want to have this CD I’m sure.
The other two tracsk are The Road From Rosine and Fox Run The Henhouse. Fox Run The Henhouse is from the previously released Tim Hensley CD, Long Monday. The Road From Rosine is an instrumental written by Jim VanCleve and debuted at the 2007 IBMA Award Show.
Radio DJs should be on the lookout for this CD, and fans of good bluegrass should be listening for these tracks.
Here’s the live video of LRB performing Them Blues. Enjoy!
AcuTab Publications has news of several new bluegrass instructional DVDs due during the summer and fall of 2008.
Just completed shooting is a fiddle project with Mountain Heart’s Jim Van Cleve which will go into editing shortly. Jim covered a number of his own compositions (#6 Barn Dance, Nature Of The Beast, Devil’s Courthouse) plus spent considerable time describing how to add rhythmically in a band setting, and how to find solos and backup in different keys.
Due to be shot next week is a banjo DVD featuring Ron Block and a mandolin video with Sierra Hull. Both will focus on these two stellar players and their individual styles. More details about these should be forthcoming soon.
A JD Crowe banjo DVD is also scheduled to be shot later this year.
If you would like to be notified by email when these new titles are released, you can make that request on the AcuTab site.
AcuTab is also pleased to note the reissue of two popular titles that have been unavailable for some time. JD Crowe - AcuTab transcriptions includes banjo tablature for all the songs on two classic albums by JD Crowe & The New South, and Kenny Smith - Tunes and Techniques offers 3 hours with this flatpicking master on two DVDs.
There will be some bluegrass offered during this week’s big CMA Music Festival and Fan Fair in Nashville.
Though the event officially begins on Thursday (6/5) and runs through Sunday (6/8), there is a kickoff concert tonight (6/4) at 10:00 p.m. hosted by Marty Stuart which will feature sets by The SteelDrivers and Old Crow Medicine Show.
On Thursday there will be a stage dedicated largely to bluegrass music. From 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. (local time) the Chevy Plaza stage will include performances by Sierra Hull, SteelDrivers, Dan Tyminski and Mountain Heart.
Jim Van Cleve, fiddle man with Mountain Heart, passed along a few of the public and media events where they will be involved this week.
“We are really excited, and feel very fortunate to be involved with something of this magnitude, especially on so many different levels. CMA Music Festival is a giant affair, and Mountain Heart is going to be a very visible presence there!
We’ll be performing on the Chevy Music Stage, set up just outside the Sommet Center on Broadway, on Thursday afternoon at 2:45. We’ll be doing lots of TV and radio interviews, including XM and several country radio stations. We’re also signing autographs in the GAC and Grand Ole Opry booths in the truTV Fan Fair Hall at the convention center. To start it all off on Wednesday, we’re going to be riding in the Chevy Kickoff Parade that travels right down Broadway. We’ve all been practicing our ‘Princess Waves,’ too, so we should be ready to roll. lol.
From Nashville, we’re heading to Enterprise, Alabama, for the first-ever BamaJam Music & Arts Festival on Saturday. The festival runs Thursday through Saturday and has a ridiculously great lineup of artists from country, bluegrass, acoustic and Americana. We’re talking about everyone from Ralph Stanley and Ricky Skaggs, to Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and Hank Jr., to Trace Adkins, Little Big Town, Yonder Mountain String Band and Old Crow Medicine Show. It’s going to be a blast!”
The second Rural Rhythm release from Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain isn’t due until July 29, but a single has been released to bluegrass radio this week.
The song is I Can Go Back Anytime, written by Jennifer Strickland, who had also contributed the song Going On The Next Train for Carrie’s first project. This new track is a driving, modern bluegrass number, which you can sample below.
Listen now:
Brance and I were very impressed by Hassler and her young band at IBMA last fall, and expect that their sophomore effort, CHHR2, will be every bit as strong as their 2006 debut. Round 2 was produced by Jim Van Cleve, who served in that capacity on the band’s earlier self-titled CD as well.
In addition to Carrie on lead vocals, the band is Keith McKinnon on guitar, Kevin McKinnon on mandolin, Travis Anderson on bass, Josh Miller on banjo, and Jamie Harper on fiddle.
UPDATE 2:35 p.m.: Jim Van Cleve shared a few comments about CHHR2:
“I am really fired up about this project on a number of levels. They came in with some very edgy material, and were completely committed to going all out with their vision on where their music is heading. They are an extremely talented, motivated, and energetic group of musicians, and their creativity is going to knock people out on this new project. It picks up right where the last one left off, and pushes harder and farther than even I expected when we started putting it all together.
Rick Hayes, mandolinist with The Gibson Brothers, is in the studio putting the finishing touches to his first solo CD, Fly By Night, due for release in May. Rick plays mandolin, guitar and bass on the project with Ron Stewart on banjo, Jim VanCleve on fiddle and Josh Swift on dobro.
Hayes handles the lead vocals as well, with the exception of a guest lead each by his bandmates Eric and Leigh Gibson. Harmony vocals were provided by Dwight McCall, the Gibsons and Clay Hess. The CD will also include a bonus track sung by his father, Green Hayes.
Hess contributed three new songs to the project, and Mark Cole, formerly of Larry Sparks & the Lonesome Ramblers, has two.
Fly By Night was recorded in Rick’s studio, Hayes Productions, where he has previously tracked projects like Dwight McCall’s Kentucky Peace of Mind and Clay Hess’s Red Haired Boy. It will be released under his new label Kang Records – an homage to the bluegrass pronunciation of the legendary King Records.
The Mashville Brigade may not be that familiar a name to most festival going bluegrass fans, but the individual members of the band should be. The Brigade is comprised of: Aaron McDaris (The Grascals) on banjo and harmony vocals; Darrell Webb (Rhonda Vincent & The Rage) on guitar and lead vocals; Ashby Frank (Special Consensus) lead vocals and mandolin; Jim VanCleve (Mountain Heart) on fiddle; and Randy Barnes (NewFound Road) on bass.
The Brigade is today’s modern version of the Sidemen. Started a year or so ago as a fun midweek gig at The Station Inn in Nashville, The Mashville Brigade releases it’s first CD on April 22, 2008. The CD is produced by the band’s own Jim VanCleve, and contains 16 tracks, all of them standard bluegrass hits. Bearing the title Bluegrass Smash Hits, Volume 1, this disc is the first in a new series of releases planned by Rural Rhythm Records.
Ashby Frank commented on the genesis of the group.
I’ve gotten to pick with these guys at various festivals and in the halls and rooms of events like IBMA, SPBMGA, and the Galax Fiddlers Convention for years. Since we both grew up in North Carolina, I’ve known Jim for the longest, actually before I even really got into Bluegrass. The first time I ever played on a Bluegrass Festival stage was with Jim in Denton, NC. I think we put together a band with my sister and opened up the festival on a Tuesday or Wednesday night.
Randy, Darrell, Jim, Aaron and myself have performed with each other as a part of quite a few different collaborations, through fill-in work or special events like the MACC Festival in Columbus, OH. Once all of us had moved to Nashville, we talked about getting something together to play around town and maybe a festival or two. It took us a few years to get together, but it’s finally worked out, and it’s a whole lot of fun.
The band started basically as a new version of the Sidemen, the infamous group that used to perform every Tuesday night at the Station Inn. The Mashville Brigade started filling that same time slot and as Jim VanCleve tells it, one thing just led to another.
The Mashville Brigade has really grown into something much larger than we ever could have anticipated from when we first began playing at the Station Inn a little over a year ago. It all basically started as an outlet for us to have some fun while playing the music we all grew up on. But since the bluegrass culture around Nashville is really a pretty tight-knit bunch of friends, we suddenly had a good sized audience each Tuesday night, full of friends and family, in a room that is known for bringing out the best in people. This comfortable atmosphere really allowed the music to grow and take on it’s own unique personality. It was really starting to blow up, and the crowds just kept getting better each week. So, after some time, we started thinking, “this band really needs to record something”! Now, after listening back to the masters of the Mashville Brigade’s first album, I can honestly say that we are all very happy with what we were able to do!
The CD was recorded in a rather unique manner for the age we live in. The guys met at the Station Inn, their primary creative outlet, during the daylight hours and tracked the entire thing in under 8 hours with no overdubs. (more…)
New Found Road is also in the studio finishing up a new project.
Guitarist and lead vocalist Tim Shelton tells us that they have completed the instrument tracking and have started in on vocals. Jim VanCleve is producing.
“There are some really good songs on this record. I’m most excited about a Tim Stafford composition called Same Old Place that he sent a couple of years ago, and we just got around to recording. I’ve always liked the song, but I’ve really loved it lately…. it’s become my favorite on the album if I had to pick just one.
We’ve also got a song from one of my favorite songwriters and vocalists, Ronnie Bowman, which is very cool. Sonya Issacs sent us a good bluegrass song, I co-wrote one with Josh Schilling, and we’ve got a gorgeous song from Tim O’Brien that is very personal to me.
I’m extremely pleased with the album. Jim VanCleve and David Hall (engineer) have been awesome to work with.”
No word yet on when the CD will be released, but we’ll pass along what we find out as the time draws near.
We got a note from Jim VanCleve this morning with news about his next producing project, the upcoming CD from Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain. Jim had produced their self-titled debut release for Rural Rhythm in 2006 and when we spoke with Carrie at IBMA last fall, she offered him a great deal of credit for the way that CD turned out.
Recording starts today with Carrie and her talented band: Keith McKinnon on guitar and vocals, Travis Anderson on bass, Josh Miller on banjo and Kevin McKinnon on mandolin and vocals.
Jim sounded mighty upbeat about getting them back into the studio.
“There were a lot of high expectations already in place before we even started selecting material for this album, largely due to the success of the last record, and the big splash the band made on the scene last year. We’re all really pumped to get this thing going, though. We’ve got a bunch of really good material put together, with a good number of the songs coming from within the band.
As folks who’ve already heard or seen Carrie are aware, she’s got that ’star vocal quality’ that is so hard to find. She’s also got the luxury of carrying a band that can ‘mash it’ in the studio or on the stage, which is rare! They are a very dynamic bunch of musicians. Oh yeah, they are about the most hilarious bunch of personalities you will put in a room at one time, too. So, as you can imagine, it’s always a lot of fun to get together with the Hard Rain Gang!
The project will be released on Rural Rhythm Records, and right now, we’re all aiming at a March release date, which will make the project available just in time for festival season. Judging by the looks of the Hard Rain calendar, fans will certainly have a good opportunity to get their hands on it, too.”
We told you last fall about the new theme song for the IBMA Awards Show, The Road From Rosine, which debuted in October ‘07 at the show in Nashville.
The song was written by Mountain Heart fiddler Jim VanCleve at the request of the Awards Show producers, Terry Herd and Cindy Sinclair, and recorded for the show by the folks at Rural Rhythm Records for the occasion. At the time, it was indicated that the song might be included on a future VanCleve solo project, but it was not available for online listening or purchase.
Well, it is now. Rural Rhythm has released The Road From Rosine as a single on iTunes. The track features Van Cleve on fiddle, Ron Stewart on banjo, Clay Hess on guitar, Andy Hall on dobro, Adam Steffey on mandolin and Jason Moore on bass.
Visit the iTunes Music Store to give it a listen or get the download for yourself.
NewFound Road is about to start working on a new CD. The first studio date is December 8, suggesting that a release in mid-to-late 2008 is reasonable.
Mountain Heart’s Jim Van Cleve will co-produce the new project with the band, and they are excited to get started.
“We’ve been rehearsing the new stuff and have new songs from Ronnie Bowman, Sonya Isaacs, Tim O’Brien, Tim Stafford. Josh Shilling and I wrote a tune and Joe Booher and Justin Moses recently wrote an instrumental for the record as well.”
Band members include Tim Shelton on guitar, Randy Barnes on bass, Jr. Williams on banjo, and Joe Booher on mandolin.
For many years now the legend of the Sidemen has lived on even though the group no longer performs at Nashville’s Station Inn.
In recent months, a new group of sidemen have come together to fill the void. They call themselves the Mashville Brigade. The group performs most Tuesday nights at The Station Inn and consists of pickers who all play in different bands on the road.
The line up may not be exactly the same every night if one or more of the guys has a gig somewhere, but the group more or less consists of Aaron McDaris (banjo), Ashby Frank (mandolin), Darrel Webb (guitar), Greg Martin or Randall Barnes (bass), and Jim VanCleve (fiddle).
The group makes an effort to play a strait up hard driving bluegrass setlist each Tuesday night, entertaining the crowd of hardcore fans who turn out for the shows.
Tonight, the line up will be a little different, as the band welcomes a few friends to the stage to “Mash” one with them.
At tonight’s show, band will be:
Josh Williams - guitar and vocals (formerly of Rhonda Vincent)
Darrel Webb - Mandolin and vocals (Currently with Rhonda Vincent)
Tim Dishman - Bass (Special Consensus) Scott Vestal - Banjo (Sam Bush Band) Jim VanCleve - Fiddle (Mountain Heart)
Daren Shumaker - sound engineer (Ronnie Bowman & Mountain Heart)
We’re expecting a fun crowd and a lot of energy, as we just recently fronted a show for Dierks Bently (where he graciously gave the Mashville Brigade a glowing review from the stage) at a Charity event in Nashville. You just never know who’s gonna drop in and mash one or two with the band, too, so it’s usually pretty interesting!
The Station Inn has dubbed the Mashville Brigade shows as $5 Tuesdays. The cover charge, pizzas, and pitchers of beer are each $5. If you’re in town, be sure to stop by and watch the guys Mash one!
The Clyde, North Carolina-based quintet Balsam Range has just announced the release of their debut CD, Marching Home.
The band comprises Marc Pruett (banjo), Caleb Smith (guitar), Darren Nicholson (mandolin), Tim Surrett (upright bass and resonator guitar) and Buddy Melton (fiddle) who all hail from Haywood County and live within 10 minutes of each other.
The quintet got together recently after various combinations had assisted in the production of solo albums. All the members of Balsam Range are from and live currently in Haywood County located in Western North Carolina. Although each were from the same town they had not played together as a group until this year. The start of the formation came with Buddy Melton’s solo recording project which featured Marc Pruett on banjo, Tim Surrett on bass, Tony Rice on guitar and Adam Steffey on mandolin. Shortly after that session, Darren Nicholson recorded his solo project which also included Marc Pruett, Tim Surrett and an array of various bluegrass greats. Soon they were getting together at each others houses to play great music for the fun of it. It basically snowballed from there.
Surrett, for whom music has been a big part of his life since school days, had recently moved back home after being gone from the area for many years traveling and playing with groups such as the Kingsmen. Nicholson had recently come off the road after playing for three years with Rounder recording artist Alecia Nugent, while Smith, who has been playing music since the age of 7, had found himself home after years of traveling with a bluegrass gospel group he helped form called Harvest. Pruett, who has long been associated with Ricky Skaggs, as well as playing with James Monroe among others, and Melton, a relative new-comer having got serious about bluegrass music while at Western Carolina University, had once played together in a bluegrass gospel group called Rock Springs Reunion and had recently started playing events together again. Some might say the timing of this union was more than just coincidental.
The CD is the result of a three way collaboration involving the group, Crossroads Records and Evergreen Publishing in Nashville. It was originally intended as a Bill Monroe tribute album, but in the end Balsam Range decided to include songs from other sources, because they felt that would be a better presentation for the band
They kept six songs associated with Monroe and added the balance of 13 from what band members brought to the sessions.
Marc Pruett spoke of the original material that they used for the CD to Carol Mallett Rifkin during an interview published in Ashville’s Citizen-Times ……………….
“Two of the songs were written by Milan Miller, of Waynesville. He and Buddy Melton are close friends. When Buddy worked in Nashville with the Jubal Foster band, he met songwriter Connie Harrington and she brought Blue Mountain to him. We all loved it. The producer wanted a really fast song, one that would blister the paint off the back wall. One that I had in my back pocket was The Train’s Ready. The Marching Home instrumental, well, my family has been interested in Civil War history for a long time. I was sitting around thinking about Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox and all those boys. One day they were in the army of Northern Virginia and the next day they were marching home. That was the inspiration.”
Mountain Heart fiddle man Jim VanCleve has the honor of seeing one of his tunes, The Road From Rosine, debuted as the new theme for the International Bluegrass Music Awards show on October 4. The tune will be played during the opening of the show, and going into/coming from breaks.
Rural Rhythm Records arranged for Jim to record the tune, along with fellow Mountain Hearters Adam Steffey on mandolin, Jason Moore on bass and Clay Hess on guitar - plus Ron Stewart on banjo and Andy Hall on dobro.
The annual awards show is being produced this year by a new team, Terry Herd and Cindy Sinclair, and Herd says that they felt like new theme music was a good way to update the show.
“We’ve had a good run with our previous theme Shoulder to Shoulder and it was not an easy decision to retire it, but now in its thirteenth year, we felt it was time for something new, and Jim was the guy to do it.”
Jim says that the opportunity came as a surprise, but that he accepted the challenge right away.
“When Terry Herd contacted me about writing a new theme song for the IBMA Awards Show, I was completely speechless! I was, of course, flattered and really excited, but it seemed like a GIANT mountain to climb, considering the fact that Mark O’Connor and Jerry Douglas, two of my all-time musical heroes, had written the only other two themes that IBMA has used in the past. I really wanted to create something that would stand up, and even more, stand the test of time.
I started working on the melody, on and off, and spent nearly a couple months putting things together. I was trying to make it really ‘theme-ish,’ which is kind of difficult to do! I wanted the song to capture the spirit of bluegrass…the way the founding fathers of the music intended for it to feel, but I also wanted it to embody a sense of where the music is heading, with kind of a forward looking element. So basically, I was trying to write a song that would bridge all the gaps between the past, the present, and the future of our music.
When I was trying to title the song, I started thinking about all the things that inspired it in the first place. I felt like The Road From Rosine was a perfect title, as it symbolized the beginnings of bluegrass via the mention of Rosine, KY, Bill Monroe’s homeplace, and then again, the forward progression of bluegrass, as the musical road lead from Rosine.”
To hear Jim’s new tune, you’ll need to be in attendance at the event, catch the proceedings live on XM’s Bluegrass Junction (track 14), or listen to one of the many after-the-fact broadcasts that will air the following week on bluegrass shows and stations worldwide.
Tickets for the IBMA Awards show at The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville are available from the Opry box office (800-733-6779) or Ticketmaster (615-255-9600). It’s always a whale of a show, and worth the trip to see bluegrass royalty in formal attire celebrating each other - and our music.
Jim tells us that he expects that The Road From Rosine will end up on a future solo project or a Mountain Heart CD at some point, and that they intend to make it available for download purchase through Rural Rhythm soon after IBMA week concludes.
Speaking of Jim VanCleve and Mountain Heart… (see update below)Here’s a YouTube clip of them performing Jim’s #6 Barn Dance at the River Of Music Party in Louisville, KY. The song was included on the band’s Force Of Nature CD, and Adam Steffey teaches it on his new mandolin instructional DVD.
UPDATE 9/22: Thanks to reader Jonathan Estep who caught my boneheaded mistake above. The song is, of course, Real Time, from Mountain Heart’s No Other Way CD.
When the roll is called of the all-time greatest fiddlers in bluegrass, the name of Benny Martin will always be included. He was a member of the Flatt & Scruggs show for several years in the early 1950s, and also worked briefly for Bill Monroe. He played on The Grand Ole Opry as a solo performer, and had stints with country artists Johnny and Jack, Roy Acuff and Kitty Wells.
He was a flamboyant performer, and a favorite with fans in the 50s and 60s for his singing and fiddling, plus his huge smile and larger-than-life persona on stage. Benny passed away in 2001, but had been in ill health since the mid-’80s, so a great many younger bluegrass fans and fiddlers have only a passing acquaintance with his brilliant playing.
Thanks to CMH Records, one of his classic recordings is set to be reissued on CD. The Fiddle Collection, originally released as a 2 LP set in 1977, is set to hit the street on October 9 in a special CD edition. The tracks from the original vinyl have been remastered, and a number of bonus tracks are included as well, all of which feature John Hartford on banjo.
Among the 28 tracks are such favorites as Lee Highway Blues, Fiddlers Dream, Back Up And Push and Ragtime Annie, as well as bluegrass numbers like Flint Hill Special, Footprints In The Snow and Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
To get a feel for just how influential Martin was on the next generation of fiddlers, we asked a few of the current nominees for the IBMA Fiddle Player Of The Year Award for comment.
“Big Tige (Benny Martin) was the quintessential bluegrass fiddle player…Unbelievably rich tone, especially considering the recording technology of the time, an incredible awareness of the vocal and an inventiveness for where he needed be in context to it. It was so natural for him. Ultimately, he played a huge part in defining for a lot of players, myself included, what types of things were appropriate for the bluegrass fiddler. It’s not unlike what Tony Rice eventually did for bluegrass guitar. His signature fire and enthusiasm just underlined the fact that what he was playing and creating was perfect!”
Ron Stewart, fiddling with JD Crowe & The New South added these words: (more…)
The purpose of the Indie Acoustic Project awards is to generate increased awareness of indie artists and record companies by promoting and recognizing outstanding works of innovative, independently produced acoustic music from around the world, and to provide a means of helping the artists to reach a wider audience.
Jim commented on receiving this award.
It is a such a huge honor to see No Apologies receive the kind of accolades it has. For it to be named Album of the Year out of all the great music released in the Roots genre this year, is just amazing!
Mountain Heart is set to start work next week on their next CD - a live recording to be tracked at a number of shows over the next few weeks.
Mandolinist Adam Steffey told us this morning that they had long wanted to record a live project, and that fans had been asking at shows if such a project was available for years. He also suggested that the live CD will be a high energy effort - and their grassiest project in some time.
Adam insisted that it would be a true live album, not “a bunch of overdubs with an audience track.”
Fiddler Jim VanCleve says that even though they had been interested in doing a live album for years, the way this project has come to pass comes with an interesting story.
“We were asked to play the Ann Arbor folk festival, on the campus of Michigan University earlier this year. We went on right after actor Jeff Daniels did a short set, and right before John Prine. There were in excess of 8,000 on hand there, we were told, and it was a pretty hyped crowd.
When we got finished, the crowd response was one of the most incredible experiences of my career. I had to pull my ear monitors out. The crowd’s reaction to the set was so loud coming back through the mics onstage that it was hurting my ears! Anyways, we made the announcement we were going to be playing Ann Arbor’s home for great music, The Ark, a month or so later, and the place erupted. We sold all our CD’s there that night, and had about a thousand or so emails regarding the show. The Ark is one of the premiere music rooms in the country, indisputably.
A month later when we actually got to the Ark, we found out the show had been sold out for hours in advance, and was going to be standing room only. It was, again, one of the most special nights I’ve experienced in my whole career - just an insane response. We had tossed the idea of recording the show that night around a bit, but it didn’t come to pass. When I mentioned that to the crowd, they went nuts. So after the show, the owner approached us, and told us the show had been the best he’d ever seen at his venue, which floored us, of course! Then, he pursued the possibility of us recording there.
Fast forward about two months. The day after we actually booked the show, it was on the front page of the Ann Arbor newspaper. Who knew a bluegrass band could ever have such an impact on a big town like that?
So, here we go. We’re starting our first-ever, full length MH LIVE album. (more…)
The video bio has Carrie and the boys shopping for music in Nashville, and talking about their musical backgrounds - with comments from producer (and Mountain Heart fiddler) Jim VanCleve as well.
We heard last week from mandolinist Ashby Frank with word of a new “second band” featuring members of several Nashville-based bluegrass acts.
They are calling themselves Mashville Brigade, and they debuted at The Station Inn on December 5. Ashby said that they have more dates there in January, and hope to move into a semi-regular Tuesday night slot there next year.
The group consists of Frank (with Alecia Nugent’s band) on mandolin, Darrel Webb (of Wildfire) on guitar, Jim VanCleve (of Mountain Heart) on fiddle, Greg Martin on bass, and Aaron McDaris (the newest member of The Grascals) on banjo.
The new band got a nice feature in The Nashville City Paper last week, in which Ashby shared an insight into the name of the group.
“In bluegrass circles we always talk about really getting into something and mashing it,” Frank said. “We’re going to be playing bluegrass styled music, but it will be very upbeat, a party type rather than more staid or traditional material. We’re not a jam band, but we will be playing an explosive, enjoyable brand of acoustic music.”
Ashby told us that they will perform material from the various members’ solo projects, and bluegrass jam classics.
We posted earlier this week that Mountain Heart fiddler Jim VanCleve had recently celebrated the birth of his first child, Ryaan. When the nominations were announced yesterday morning for the 49th Grammy Awards, it turned out that Jim has something else to crow about.
The song, Nature Of The Beast from his debut CD release, No Apologies, received a nomination in the Best Country Instrumental Performance category.
“I can’t really even put into words what an extreme honor it is to be recognized with a Grammy Nomination!! It’s incredible! To be nominated right alongside some of my musical heroes in the Instrumental Performance of the Year category, is the most flattering honor I could ever imagine! I thought that “Nature of the Beast’ definitely had a certain mood that really hit home with me, but I certainly wasn’t ready for this!! Thanks to everyone who has supported me and my efforts on ‘No Apologies’ in the past year!!”
The other nominees in this category include Casy Driessen (Jerusalem Ridge from 3D), Tommy Emmanuel (Gameshow Rag/Cannonball Rag from The Mystery), Bryan Sutton & Doc Watson (Whiskey Before Breakfast from Not Too Far From The Tree) and Chris Thile (The Eleventh Reel from How To Grow A Woman From The Ground).
Congratulations and best of luck to all the nominees for Best Country Instrumental Performance. The Awards will be announced in Los Angeles, CA on February 11, 2007.
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.
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There will be some bluegrass offered during this week’s big 
Rick Hayes,
We told you 
