Our friends at Mandolin Cafe have made the audio from the 2006 LoarFest West panel discussions available on their site. Participants were Roger Siminoff, Darryl Wolfe, Charlie Derrington, Dan Beimborn and Bruce Harvie, moderated by Mandolin Cafe’s Scott Tichenor.

We recorded an interview yesterday with Craig Wilson, one of the organizers of the LoarFest West event, which will be included in a future episode of The GrassCast.

We made mention of the launch of Fretboard Journal late last year, when the inaugural issue was set to be published. We have just received word that their third edition is being mailed now to subscribers, with a publication date of August 1.

The 8/06 issue will feature an interview with Wade Mainer, a seminal banjo pioneer who merged old time and early three finger styles, and a detailed interview with Bill Collings of Collings Guitars. The cover story is one on Nashville songwriter Guy Clark, and the new issue also includes a report on Loar Fest West (which we mentioned earlier as well).

The editors like to describe this publication as a coffee-table style magazine, and focus much of their attention to providing a visually entertaining presentation along with the text content of each issue. They proudly point out that the magazine is published on archival quality paper, and full color is used throughout. They make no stylistic distinctions, and intend to simply cover acoustic music and the instruments used to create it.

Subscription details can be found on their site.