When Emmy Lou Harris appears on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Monday, September 17, she’ll have John Starling & Carolina Star in tow as her special guests. They will be performing a vocal version of Get Up John to help promote the release of her 4 CD box set, Songbird, due out on Rhino on 9/18.

Carolina Star is made up of several original members of Seldom Scene: John Starling on guitar and vocals, Mike Auldridge on dobro and Tom Gray on bass. Rickie Simpkins on fiddle and Jimmy Gaudreau on mandolin round out the band. Their debut CD, Slidin’ Home, featured Emmy Lou as a guest artist, so the guys are returning the favor on Leno next week.

They will recording a spot with her for the BBC next week as well.

Songbird will contain 78 Emmy Lou Harris songs from 1970-2006, plus a DVD with 9 videos. Harris chose each of the tracks which span her long career as a recording artist, including her acclaimed work with Gram Parsons and her later Hot Band era.

See the full track list online.

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno airs at 11:30 p.m. in most NBC markets, immediately following local 11:00 news. Look for Emmy Lou and Carolina Star near the end of the show, closing in on 12:30 p.m.

This morning’s edition of The Washington Post carries a nice feature piece on John Starling & Carolina Star.

Written by Post staffer Richard Harwood, the article highlights the return of DC-area music scene stalwarts John Starling, Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray, original members of Seldom Scene who started in DC in the early 1970s. The three former compatriots are reunited as members of John Starling & Carolina Star, along with Rickie Simpkins and Jimmy Gaudreau.

“The reaction’s been very heartwarming,” Auldridge says of the group’s reemergence. “It’s like in the early days of the Scene: We’re just doing this because it’s fun, but people are making us realize that they missed us, and that’s really nice to hear.”

Read the whole article online.

Adrian Fenty, the Mayor of The District of Columbia, has issued an official proclamation designating February 23, 2007 as John Starling and Carolina Star Day in the District.

The text of the proclamation reads:

WHEREAS, the greater Washington, D.C.-area has become one of the most active, creative and productive Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Communities in the world; and

WHEREAS, John Starling, Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray along with John Duffey, whose notice of passing was recently entered into the Congressional Record, have been instrumental to the D.C.-area Art And Cultural Landscape, influencing an entire generation of American Roots and Bluegrass musicians including Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers, Ricky Skaggs and Linda Ronstadt; and

WHEREAS, John Starling served his country as a US Army surgeon in Vietnam and at the Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital; and

WHEREAS, the artists have rekindled their 30-plus year relationship and now return to Alexandria’s Birchmere Music Hall on the 23rd of February, 2007, to celebrate their impact on American Music and the Washington, D.C.-Area Bluegrass scene:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, THE MAYOR OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, do hereby proclaim February 23, 2007, as “JOHN STARLING AND CAROLINA STAR DAY” in Washington, DC, and call upon all the residents of this great city to join me in observing this day as we demonstrate our appreciation of these artists’ contribution to a unique American Art Form, and the Art and Culture of the Washington, DC area.

Adrian M. Fenty
Mayor, District of Columbia

The debut CD from Carolina Star, Slidin’ Home, was released today (2/20/07) on Rebel Records.

We found a number of feature pieces on bluegrass/acoustic artists in various print publications this past few days.

Friday’s Knoxville News Sentinel ran an interview with Abby Washburn of Uncle Earl. She talked about their upcoming CD, Waterloo, Tennessee, and having it produced by John Paul Jones, former bass player with Led Zeppelin. The discussion also turned to the notion of performing with an all-female string band.

“Everybody has a different perception of what it means to be an all-female band,” says Washburn. “Sometimes it works in our favor. And sometimes bluegrass festivals will hire us, it seems like, as a way to fill a quota.”

However, Washburn says that women, especially, seem to appreciate the group.

“I think we make it more accessible to them — especially since we haven’t all been playing this music since we were 4 years old,” she says.

Read the whole piece on the News Sentinel site.

Sunday’s edition of The Tennessean, Nashville’s hometown paper, had a piece on The Grascals’ recent appearance with Dierks Bentley on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Staff writer Peter Cooper accompanied the band to Los Angeles for the show, and recounts their day at the CBS studio. He also spoke with Ferguson about his appreciation for American country music, and his desire to include it in The Late Late Show programming.

“I got here at this show two years ago and said, ‘We need to send a message to the country community that this is a country-friendly show,’” he said. “When I was a kid in Scotland, we heard a lot of country music. It was Johnny Cash — forever — and then there was Hank Williams. The first Hank Williams. Country music is popular in Glasgow, Scotland. These are working-class, drinking people.”

You can read the lengthy piece online at The Tennessean site.

This morning’s edition of the Fredericksburg, VA Free Lance-Star has a feature on tomorrow’s release of Slidin’ Home by John Starling & Carolina Star. Since Fredericksburg can lay claim to Starling as a former resident, the article focuses on the fact that Starling left bluegrass to dedicate himself to medical practice, but is now back after his retirement.

Thirty years ago, the Seldom Scene bluegrass band founding member quit the cult-favorite-group-to-be to focus on ears, noses and throats in a Fredericksburg medical practice.

Now he’s retired from medicine–concentrating exclusively on ears.

Read this one online as well.

There has been a good bit of anticipation building up in the bluegrass world, awaiting the release next week of Slidin’ Home, the debut release from John Starling & Carolina Star. Starling is joined in this new endeavor by his original Seldom Scene bandmates Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray, a group whose popularity has endured even as it has been through an almost complete overhaul in membership over more than 30 years performing under that name.

Rebel Records announced yesterday that the entire project can be previewed at CMT.com, where advance orders for Slidin’ Home can also be placed for shipment on the February 20 release date. At that point, the CD will be available wherever bluegrass and acoustic music are sold.

John Starling will join host and general manager Gracie Muldoon on WorldWideBluegrass.com today (2/16) for an interview at 1:30 p.m. (EST). They will discuss John’s new CD with Carolina Star (featuring Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray), and play a few tracks as well. The new project, Slidin’ Home, is due for release next week (2/20) on Rebel Records.

Just visit the WWB site and click on the Listen button to start their live, 24/7 bluegrass feed, available in several different streaming formats for either high speed or broadband connection.

More great bluegrass radio news for the upcoming football weekend.

The Saturday Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast on WSM will include performances from John Starling & Carolina Star, along with Bobby Osborne, Mike Snider, and Del McCoury. The Whites, Emmy Lou Harris and Vince Gill are also scheduled on Saturday night, so the possibilities are better than average that some interesting combinations will appear on stage.

It seems especially likely that Starling and Harris will sing their duet on In My Hour Of Darkness, which is featured on the upcoming CD from John Starling & Carolina Star, Slidin’ Home, as they are scheduled in the same segments (8:30-9:00, 11:00-11:30) in both the early and late Opry broadcasts.

You can hear the song, one that Emmy Lou co-wrote with Gram Parsons, on the band’s MySpace page, .

For those who can tune in to WSM over the air in the south/central US, you’ll find them at 650 AM, broadcasting from Nashville. If not, you can catch the live WSM audio stream online to hear the program, which runs from 7:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, February 3 (EST).

Emmy Lou, Starling and Del will also appear on tonight’s Friday Opry show (2/2), which is not broadcast. Selections from both the Friday and Saturday shows will be posted in the WSM audio archives page by early next week.

We posted last month about Slidin’ Home, the Rebel release from John Starling & Carolina Star due out on February 20. Assisting John in Carolina Star are fellow original Seldom Scene members Tom Gray and Mike Auldridge, with a guest appearance from Emmy Lou Harris.

The publicist for this new project, Lotos Nile Media, has posted a video interview with both Starling and Harris which includes audio from the new CD, and discussion and remembrances of their early days in the Washington, DC folk and bluegrass music scene, as well as the genesis of their collaboration on Slidin’ Home.

The interview is conducted with George Massenberg, who produced the new CD, as well as several Seldom Scene projects and The Trio CD with Emmy Lou, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt for which he won a Grammy in 1988. Starling speaks quite highly of his experiences with Massenberg.

“George recorded the Seldom Scene’s Act 3 and Old Train, demonstrating to us that a ‘live’ approach could also sound ‘slick,’ using multi-track recording. As time passed, we, as did others, became addicted to the slick, layered approach offered by multi-track, and strayed from the live studio approach. For the new project, we felt that modern, high resolution digital recording and mixing techniques, a good acoustic environment, and musician practice prior to, not on, recording day, could once again make the process fun for everybody.”

Go to the Lotos Nile site to watch the full interview.

You can hear audio samples from Slidin’ Home on the band’s MySpace page, where you will also find their 2007 show dates.

Hard core fans of bluegrass supergroup Seldom Scene are inclined to the sort of internecine squabbles that occur among folks fiercely loyal to their favorite sports team. To wit, the familiar arguments about which edition of the team was the best, and whether the boys on the field in the 60s would have beaten those from the 80s.

For Scene fans, the disputes are about whether the original band (Starling, Auldridge, Eldridge, Duffey and Gray) has ever been eclipsed by the many fine lineups that followed, or the first rate band now performing under that name, with Ben Eldridge the sole founding member on stage.

Taking no side in this dispute, I can predict that Seldom Scene originalists will have much to cheer in the February release of Slidin’ Home, from John Starling & Carolina Star. In addition to Starling, the band includes Scene founders Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray, plus Jimmie Gaudreau and Ricky Simpkins.

They were assisted on the new CD by Emmy Lou Harris, who has been a long time duet partner with Starling. She joins him on In My Hour Of Darkness, a song she co-wrote with Gram Parsons. Other tracks include Starling’s take on Lowell George’s classic anthem, Willin’ and Waitin’ For A Train.

Starling says that they dedicated a lot of effort to utilizing modern recording technology in ways that would enhance a live, living room sort of feel.

“For the new project, we felt that modern, high-resolution digital recording and mixing techniques, a good acoustic environment and musician practice prior to, not on, recording day, would once again make the process fun for everybody. And I knew Mike and Tom were the type of world-class musicians who could pull this off.

We were able to really capture the energy and excitement that comes from playing live. We had really high expectations going into this, but I think the new record exceeds everything we wanted to accomplish.”

There are a couple of audio samples from Slidin’ Home on the band’s MySpace page, which also lists some show dates where the band will be appearing next year.

Slidin’ Home is scheduled for a February 20, 2007 release on Rebel Records. Radio service is anticipated shortly after the new year.