Doyle’s set featured songs from his current Rounder CD, Lonely Street, plus a couple of their all-time favorites like Blue Train. The music is great as always, and the audio engineer actually discovered the banjo after a few songs.

The Lovells’ segment is also made up from material on their latest CD, Time To Grow, a self-produced effort that marked their shift from a teen act to a group of serious young musicians. Jessica Lovell spoke to us at length last year about the travails they experienced in getting it released, and what led them to reject a major label contract with a glidepath to mainstream pop success.

You can read that interview on The Bluegrass Blog.

The Sara Watkins set from Mountain Stage is also available online.

Rhonda Vincent will be on tonight’s (7/17) show in the 8:00-8:30 p.m. segment (EDT), and The Lovell Sisters will be on Saturday night’s show in the 8:00-8:30 and 10:30-11:00 slots.

Jesse McReynolds and Mike Snider will also perform on Friday night, and Snider and The Whites will appear on Saturday’s show.

CMT had a nice feature about The Lovells on their blog earlier this week, comparing them favorably to The Dixie Chicks. No pressure there…

The Opry is broadcast live on WSM AM 650 in Nashville, on XM channel 11 (XM Nashville), and simulcast worldwide via online streaming at wsmonline.com. Friday’s show runs from 8:00-10:00 p.m., and Saturday’s from 8:00 p.m.-12:30 a.m. All times EDT.

The show, which aired originally on June 8, has performances by Sara Watkins and The Lovell Sisters, viewable online as a Windows Media file. Both artists show the vibrancy and diversity of young bluegrass-oriented acts, and the ways in which young women interpret the music, as they offer live music from their new CDs.

Tonight’s (6/15) Woodsongs broadcast will include a set from Rhonda Vincent & The Rage, showcasing songs from her next CD, Destination Life, due out tomorrow (6/16) on Rounder. It airs live at 7:00 p.m. (EDT) and you can catch the show in real time online, in both video and audio.

Woodsongs is carried by a very large number of radio stations all over the world, most of who run the show later in the week. Check their affiliates list for details on when the show may air in your area.

The trio consists of sisters Jessica on fiddle, Megan on resonator guitar and Rebecca on mandolin along with Dan Kimbro on bass and Matt Wingate on guitar.

Blue Plate Special airs at noon (EST), broadcast on WDVX (102.9 FM) in Knoxville, TN and live online via audio streaming.

Perhaps we’ll hear some more during the show about their next CD, which Jessica discussed with us in detail back in August’08.

We talked in some detail about what the three young ladies have been doing for the past year or so, and got an answer to the question they have been hearing from their fans for the past two years… “When are you guys going to have a new CD out?”

The only studio recording they have released came in 2005 (When Forever Rolls Around), not long after they won the National Teen Talent Competition on Prairie Home Companion, and only a short time after the three of them embraced bluegrass music, leaving their classical studies behind.

Big things have happened for the girls since then, and their sound has matured as their professional life has expanded. A new album seemed like an obvious next step after being invited to showcase at IBMA in the fall of 2006, and by the middle of 2007, Jessica said that it looked like all their hopes were about to be fulfilled.

“We were working with a manager who was shopping us to labels in Nashville, and we had met with five of them who were serious about signing us. After a lot of thought and discussion, we decided to sign with Lyric Street Records, which is a division of Disney.

They had paired us up with producer Mark Bright, and everything seemed perfect. Mark had just finished producing Carrie Underwood, so we knew he could work well with female artists, and he had previously produced Mountain Heart, so we knew he was great with bluegrass and acoustic instruments.”

As they got closer to start recording, they started to get nervous about the direction things were taking. It was becoming clear that the label had chosen a path and a sound for the Lovells, and that the artist’s input wasn’t a high priority.

“It really hit me when Mark Bright mentioned one day that when he worked with Rascal Flatts, the biggest problem he had was convincing them not to record any of their original material. That hit me hard, as we wanted to do exactly that!

I don’t mean any disrespect to Mark or Lyric Street. They were great to us and treated us very fairly. It just started to look like we were heading into a place where we would lose control over our music.”

The Lovells consulted with their attorney, who was able to negotiate a release from their contract with Lyric Street in December of 2007, something not many young artists would consider. Turning down a major label and an established producer?

“People were telling us we were crazy! But to me, selling out means doing music you don’t believe in, and we didn’t want to start out like that.”

As 2008 began, the girls decided that the only way they could get the music recorded the way they envisioned it was to produce the next album themselves, and they were determined to finish it entirely before talking to any labels.

Jessica said that they have spent most of the summer in the studio, finishing this next project.

“We started recording in in mid-May, and are nearly finished now. Between May and the end of August, I’ll bet we put in 3 solid months of recording. We wanted to get everything just right, and it has turned out to be exactly what we wanted it to be.

We’ve been working with Brent Truitt in Nashville, recording in his studio and with him co-producing with the three of us. He makes us feel so comfortable in the studio when things get intense, and gets great tones on everything.

When we get home from Europe, we have just a few overdubs to finish, and we’ll be done. It should be mixed and mastered by mid-October.”

Gary Paczosa, who has worked extensively artists like Alison Krauss and Blue Highway, will do the mixing.

Most of the tracks were performed by The Lovell Sisters – Jessica on fiddle, Rebecca on mandolin and Megan on resonator guitar, with all three contributing on vocals. Their regular road guitarist, Matt Wingate, recorded on this project, with Viktor Krauss on bass. A few other instruments were used on selected tracks – cello, piano, organ and accordion.

Percussion is also used on this record, but Jessica said they wanted to be 100% certain that it complemented the sound and wasn’t added just to have drums.

“John Gardner played the drums, and we had him come in and cut after all the rest of the tracking was finished, so he would hear the rhythm we wanted for each track. He has this incredible way of ’sneaking in’ the drums, filling spaces in the rhythm section without getting on top of anything else.”

She said that they are about to sign with a new management company who will shop the finished CD to labels, with the hope of seeing it released by the spring of 2009.

The sound of the new CD offers glimpses into the varied musical styles that appeal to The Lovell Sisters, with elements of bluegrass, pop folk and Gospel showing their impact. Several songs are Lovell originals, and two instrumentals are included.

“We love this record. It shows how much we’ve grown in the last two years. It sounds like what it is – a five piece acoustic band – very much like our live show.”

For the next two and a half weeks, touring in Europe is all the girls will have on their minds. They have stops scheduled in Belgium, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden. A number of songs from the next show will be previewed during this tour, and they will also mark the European release of When Forever Rolls Around in Norway.

The full tour schedule can be found on The Lovell Sisters web site.

“All in all, it’s been a very interesting past 12-18 months…”

I should say it has.

At 11:00 a.m. this morning, Jimmy Gaudreau will join host Carol Beaugard on Lonesome Pine RFD, broadcast from 9:00 a.m. to noon on 89.1 FM in the New York City area. Jimmy is on tour now with Moondi Klein supporting their duo Rebel CD, 2:10 Train. They are opening for Emmylou Harris over the course of her summer tour.

You can find their tour dates on the duo’s web site.

If you aren’t in the NYC area, Lonesome Pine RFD is streamed live online at WFDU.fm.

At noon, The Lovell Sisters will perform live on WDVX’s Blue Plate Special. The show originates from Knoxville, TN and is broadcast in that market at 102.9 FM – and via live streaming online.

Blue Plate Special airs at noon (EDT).

For those who subscribe to Sirius satellite radio, here’s another one worth your attention.

The Infamous Stringdusters will be on Sirius Bluegrass tonight at 8:00 p.m. (EDT). The broadcast will feature a live set recorded last week at Nashville’s Station Inn where the guys run through all of the songs from their new CD, The Infamous Stringdusters, plus a couple of bluegrass favorites.

Should you miss tonight’s show, it will replay on Sirius Bluegrass on Saturday (6/21) at 10:00 p.m. and on Sunday (6/22) at 4:00 p.m. (all times eastern).

Sirius Bluegrass can be found at channel 65 on your Sirius Satellite Radio receiver. They also offer a subscription-based online service, Sirius Internet Radio, and free 3-day trials are offered to non-subscribers.

There is nothing up yet on the sisters’ official web site – they only list dates through August – so keep an eye on that site for further details.

The girls, between 16 and 21, are relative newcomers to bluegrass but as their debut CD and this live concert release show, they are very quick studies. Jessica plays fiddle, Rebbecca mandolin, and Megan resophonic guitar, with all three singing. They are joined by Jake Stargel on guitar and Andy Nall on bass.

Jessica tells us that the DVD was an unplanned event.

“Actually, we weren’t aware the set would be filmed until we arrived at the festival. It was truly an awesome night! We played the late night slot just prior to Doc Watson. The footage turned out really well.”

Ten songs are featured, and a track list can be found on their web site.

Blue Plate Special airs live performances each weekday at noon (eastern), broadcast from Knoxville, TN at 89.9 FM. Listeners worldwide can catch the show via live streaming from the WDVX web site. The station does not archive these live shows, so be sure to tune in when it airs later today at noon.

Audio samples from the girls’ debut CD can be found on their web site, and they have a number of live videos available on YouTube.

The audio mix is a little disappointing during the first part of the show. This is not the fault of the girls though and it does improve marginally as the concert proceeds. Thankfully the vocals are mixed up where you can hear them most of the time, but the mandolin is often absent just when you want to hear Rebecca cut loose. None the less, this band is worth hearing, even with a less than desirable audio mix.

Check their tour schedule to see them near you.

You can find these archives at Martha’s Vineyard Radio (mvyradio.com) where a mix of stage shows, workshops, jams and interviews from Merlefest 2007 are listed alphabetically.

With the far ranging musical diversity that is a Merlefest trademark, you can expect to find sets from some of your favorite acts and also discover something new. Bluegrass and acoustic music fans will surely be interested in the performances from headliners like Sam Bush, Cherryholmes, Del McCoury, Doyle Lawson, Peter Rowan and The Nashville Bluegrass Band.

Some special highlights are the guitar mini-concert with Bryan Sutton and Chris Eldridge, multiple performances by The Infamous Stringdusters and Uncle Earl, a set by Crooked Still and one by The Lovell Sisters.

Songwriters get their due as well, with a open mic set from Mark “Brink” Brinkman and Chris Austin Bluegrass Songwriting contest winner Jeanette Williams.

There are hours of great live music at the mvyradio.com Merlefest 2007 audio archives. Set some time aside and sample the sounds.

The Claire Lynch Band and The Lovell Sisters will represent bluegrass music at the conference, held in Memphis, TN February 21-15, 2007 at The Cook Convention Center and The Marriott Convention Center Hotel. Unlike the IBMA’s annual convention, which is held each year in Nashville, Folk Alliance chooses a new convention site each year.

You can find convention information (registration, schedule, etc) on the Folk Alliance web site.

Photos by Tami Roth © 2006

Jeremy Garrett	Chris Pandolfi	Andy Hall	Chris Eldridge
Jesse Cobb	Chris Pandolfi	Downhill Bluegrass Band	Frankie Nagle
Audie Blaylock	Michael Cleveland	The Lovell Sisters	Rhonda Vincent
Donica Christensen	Daughters of Bluegrass	Becky Buller	Dale Ann Bradley

The sisters – Jessica, 19 (violin/fiddle); Megan, 16 (resophonic guitar); and Rebecca, 14 (mandolin) of Calhoun, Ga. are joined by fellow Georgian Andy Nall, on bass, and 19-year-old guitarist Brad Frazier, of Evansville, Tn.

This year the SHS Bluegrass Jamboree will be composed mainly of bluegrass performed by talented teens. In addition to the LSB, will be The Baker Boys from Indiana, The Barker Brothers from Copperhill, TN; Browngrass of Gainesboro, TN; and Garrett Arb and the Grassy Mountain Boys of Dalton. There will also be veteran bands appearing, including Peach Tree Station of the greater Atlanta area, Autumn Harvest of Dalton, and Spatial Effects from Northwest Georgia.

The club is hoping to increase the size of this year’s event and calls the line up,

one of the finest line ups of teen talent ever to appear at a venue in the Southeast.

This GrassCast is 13 minutes in length and the file download size is 12MB.

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