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 ‚Äî 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 ‚Äî forever ‚Äî 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.