Bluegrass singer/songwriter Gary Ferguson took a different approach for his most recent CD. Instead of hunkering down in the studio for days of intense recording, he enlisted the support of some friends -  top bluegrass performers all - and cut the tracks live at a festival show.

The result is Gary Ferguson and Friends - Live at Podunk, recorded at the Podunk Bluegrass Festival in Connecticut. Assisting on the CD are Mike Auldridge, Gail Wade, Ron Stewart, Emory Lester, Kene Hyatt and Marc Roy.

Audio samples and download purchases are available at DigStation, and info about mail orders can be found on Gary’s MySpace page.

Dobro master Mike Auldridge and Infamous Stringdusters bass man Travis Book share their insights in the two most recent editions of Musicians Tips on BluegrassCountry.org.

Travis talks about taking bass solos, while Mike’s tips focus on questions of sound reinforcement. Previous episodes have included tips on stage presence from Bill Emerson and Sonya Isaacs and singing from Jamie Dailey.

BluegrassCountry.org posts these weekly audio features on their web site, runs them during the week they are posted in their 24/7 bluegrass programming, and then archives them online. You can also subscribe to the series as a podcast, and get each as it is made available.

Morning host Katy Daley will be broadcasting from IBMA this week, and Brance and I will be joining her for a live interview sometime later this week.  She’ll have a variety of bluegrass celebrities joining her in the studio from the World Of Bluegrass each morning from 7:00 - 10:00 a.m. (ET).

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.

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.

We got a new CD recently that will appeal to folks who like to hear simple old time and folk melodies played on stringed instruments, in an unassuming, relaxed style. It’s called Straight From The Porch, and comes from Curt Baker and Greg Honeycutt, two fine players from southwestern Virginia, who play resonator slide guitar and flatpick guitar respectively.

Greg says that he and Curt have nothing against more modern string music, and follow it closely, in fact. He says that some of his favorite music comes from artists like Blue Highway, Kenny & Amanda Smith and Alison Krauss & Union Station.

“We love the more arranged and produced sound they get, and respect and admire their artistry. What we wanted to do with this CD, though, was record something more sparse and unornamented, that would really let the melodies shine through.

That’s where the title came from - we wanted it to sound like what you would hear when a couple of guys sit together on the porch to pick a few. That’s where this music came from, in earlier times, and we just wanted to recreate that sort of sound, as best we could.”

To help get that sound, they recorded primarily on older instruments, but not the high dollar ones now so prized by collectors. Curt and Greg instead used the Depression-era instruments more likely to be used by “regular folks,” the off-brand guitars sold through mail order catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward.

Much of the material will be familiar, though a few newer songs and a couple of originals are included as well. Greg and Curt brought in some well known pickers to help out, with both Mike Auldridge and Herschel Sizemore lending their skills to the recording. Mike joins Curt for a dobro duet, and Herschel joins the guys on an old timey cut of Big Sciota.

Both Curt and Greg have bluegrass backgrounds, and that influence shows throughout. Shannon Wheeler also guests on fiddle, and Lee Dunbar on banjo.

You can hear samples from all 15 tracks on CDBaby.

Rob Ickes has announced a four day resophonic guitar summit in Nashville this fall. Billed as ResoSummit, it will include workshops and performances, and a hands-on experience is promised for all students.

Instructors tapped to participate in addition to Rob are Mike Auldridge, Phil Leadbetter, Randy Kohrs, Michael Witcher, and Andy Hall, plus luthiers Tim Scheerhorn and Paul Beard.

Things kick off on Thursday (11/8) with a concert at The Station Inn by The Infamous Stringdusters. Classes then run from Friday (11/9) through Sunday (11/11). Here’s how Rob describes the weekend’s activities:

From Friday through Sunday, we’ll have a full menu of workshops, jams, “dobro speed dates,” faculty fave song deconstruction, and other creative approaches designed to ramp up your playing rapidly and enrich your creativity. We’ll be tapping some truly gifted teachers and players to make all this happen, and we’re going to make sure everyone has lots of fun in the process. We’ve found a great campus right off Music Row - The Scarritt-Bennett Center - for all our daytime activities. This beautiful Gothic campus will make you think you’re in college (except no exams!), and will put you in just the right mood for a high-energy learning experience. And a nearby recording studio will be available for a hands-on recording experience, for those who dare!

Each night during the ResoSummit, we’ll head back to The Station Inn for some great performances by bands featuring faculty members, including Three Ring Circle. And for the grand finale on late Sunday afternoon, we’ll have a closing performance at the Harambee Auditorium at Scarritt-Bennett.

By the end of the Summit on Sunday evening, you’ll be loaded up with enough inspiration and “homework” to keep you busy for the next year!

There is no web site for the event, but Rob encourages anyone with an interest in ResoSummit to contact him by email for registration forms. Full tuition is $350, which includes all workshops and evening concerts.

Recently, Katy Daly and Jen Hitt of WAMU and BluegrassCountry.org traveled to Hagerstown, MD with Mike Auldridge to visit the shop of resonator guitar maker Paul Beard. They recorded their discussions with Beard and put them together to broadcast as a special program called Resonator Guitar 101.

The show airs for the first time today on Bluegrasscountry.org at 6:00 p.m., and will reair daily (except Saturdays) through the rest of January.

Mike and Paul take Katy on a tour of the shop, and explain the various techniques and technology required to build a modern resonator guitar. Mike also tests a few of the newly constructed instruments on the show.

Here is the Resonator Guitar 101 schedule for the rest of this month (1/07).

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.

A couple of familiar names may entice you to consider the debut, self-titled CD from The Skylighters, a DC-area band who combine bluegrass, western swing, gospel and honky-tonk music. Jimmy Gaudreau on mandolin/vocals and Mike Auldridge on dobro will catch the attention of bluegrassers, and join Eric Brace (guitar/vocals), J. Carson Gray (bass) and Martin Lynds (drums/vocals) to complete the lineup.

The Skylighters’ story will be familiar as well. Heard this one before?

A bunch of musicians in the Washington DC area get together to play for fun, and end up recording and performing their mix of traditional, modern and original music after things click at informal sessions. Include dobro master Mike Auldridge in the telling, and the sense of déjà vu deepens.

It isn’t fair to throw comparisons with Seldom Scene at The Skylighters, but the parallels are interesting, if only in a historical sense.

The music and the mix of styles is perhas more reminiscent of what Gaudreau and Auldridge did with Chesapeake some years back, and might be more properly described as Americana than traditional, bluegrass or roots music.

A track listing and audio samples are available on the Red Beet Records site. Look for the Jukebox link to hear song snippets.

Over the next few days, we hope to publish a number of brief tributes to Josh Graves from resonator guitarists whose own music was shaped in part by Josh’s.

This first comes from Mike Auldridge:

Josh Graves influenced my life beyond mere words of gratitude. He changed my life. I would not be a professional musician, or even have any real burning desire to play the steel guitar at all, had I not discovered his wonderful playing when I was about 12 years old. He became my mentor and then good friend, when I decided to try music as a profession. I will miss Josh deeply.

This next comes from Phil Leadbetter:

I don’t think I would have ever played the dobro guitar if it had not been for Josh Graves. The dobro guitar world changed forever on September 30th 2006 when we lost Uncle Josh. I will always treasure the first time I ever met Josh when I was only 12 years old, and he let me get up on stage and pick “Shuckin’ The Corn” with him in Maryville, TN in 1974. It was one of the highlights of my career. I have been blessed knowing Uncle Josh and calling him a friend. We lost a musical giant when we lost Josh.