Heather Berry is known to bluegrass fans as one of the award winning Daughters of Bluegrass. She put her first band together when she was 12 and recorded a CD titled Reflections of the Past. In 2006 she released To A Dove on Blue Circle Records. Now her second CD for that label has been released. At the young age of 20, this is her 8th CD.

It is aptly titled Before Bluegrass, because the music presented here is in the style of the 1920-1940’s. Recorded live with no overdubs, this CD reflects the traditions of early Appalachian recordings such as The Bristol Sessions. The CD features Heather and her husband Tony Mabe performing as a duo. The couple bears witness to the traditions that led to bluegrass music. You’ll hear echos of the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, Charlie Pool and other old-time influences on this CD

My husband and I have been wanting to record a project like this since we first started dating. Now thanks to Tom T. and Dixie Hall and Blue Circle Records, we are so happy to present this album to you.

These are the kind of songs that we grew up on, and are very near and dear to our hearts. For name’s sake, we’re calling this "Before Bluegrass" because it really is the style of music that bluegrass came from.

…we want to not only help to preserve the heartfelt, beautifully pure music that they made, but to also maybe introduce it to new audiences who will hopefully love it just as much as us.

Heather and Tony are proud that there are no overdubs, punches, vocal tuning, or effects on this recording. It is just them playing and singing songs they love. Not all the music is old though. Tom T. and Dixie Hall contributed a couple of new songs that fit the style of the recording.

If you’re interested in hearing some samples of this recording, visit Heather’s home page. There are short samples from 5 songs featured in an embedded flash jukebox.

The Blue Circle Records MySpace page features several other samples. And here is a youtube music video for one of the songs on the record.

Josh Williams unveiled his new band last Saturday at The Station Inn in Nashville. It was their first public performance, and a good many of Nashville’s bluegrass folks were on hand.

Among them was veteran songwriter and bluegrass entrepreneur Tom T. Hall, who shared a few words about the show on Josh’s web site.

At nine-fifteen, a hush lay over the crowd and then suddenly a wild burst of applause swept the room as Josh, Clayton, Tim, Jason, and Chase took the stage; after all the years of playing in other bands, including Rhonda Vincent’s Rage, we were now looking at The Josh Williams Band.

All of the songs that Josh had recorded over the years could now be performed at his own discretion. He made mention of the fact that he had worked many nights when he got to sing only one song. And now he had the stage all to himself with his own band.

Miss Dixie and I looked at one another and smiled. After all the learning, practice, watching, patience and dedication to his craft and his art, Josh Williams had arrived.

Josh’s band features Clayton Campbell on fiddle, Tim Dishman on bass, Jason McKendree on banjo, Chase Johner on mandolin, and Williams on guitar and lead vocals.

You can read the rest of Tom T.’s comments on Josh’s site, and see several photos from the show on photographer Bobby Jones’ web site.

The Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville has just announced the list of this year’s inductees, all of whom have a bluegrass connection.

The honorees are selected annually in three chronological career categories: pre WWII, WWII to 1975, and 1975-present.

Ernest V. (Pop) Stoneman will be honored in the first (pre WWII) category. He was the patriarch of the Stoneman Family, one of the most prolific and infuential of the early country recording artists. One of his sons, Scotty Stoneman, is claimed as a primary influence by successive generations of bluegrass and old time fiddlers.

The next category (WWII to 1975) produced a tie. Both Tom T. Hall and The Statler Brothers will share this year’s honor. The Statlers have not done much bluegrass – though they belong in every hall of fame for giving us Roadhog Moran & his Cadillac Cowboys – but many of their songs have found their way into the bluegrass Gospel repertoire.

Tom T. Hall, of course, has dedicated his recent career to writing, recording and promoting bluegrass music, and with his wife Dixie, has left a legacy to the music in the form of a bequest to the IBMA upon their passing.

In the modern (1975-present) category, Emmylou Harris, gets the nod. Though she is more generally regarded as a country artist, her contributions to bluegrass are legion, from performing/recording with Seldom Scene to having hired, performed with and promoted the careers of artists like Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice and Sam Bush.

Congratulations to this year’s inductees!

HT: Jon Weisberger

In yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, the music section had a story featuring Tom T. Hall. The story was focused on Mr. Hall’s relationship to country radio stations and was appropriately headlined as…

Who Needs Country Radio? Not Tom T. Hall

The story spends a good deal of time discussing Hall’s growing alliance with the bluegrass music industry. The author suggests that the reason Hall has been pitching his tunes to bluegrass artists in recent years is that Hall felt the bluegrass artists would be true to the songs and not change them to make them commercially acceptable for country radio, thus preserving the integrity of his music.

Who would record them without changing them to make radio happy or forcing him into complicated business deals?

Bluegrass singers would.

Tom T. goes on to discuss his history of growing up in Appalachia, and made this great comment about writing bluegrass songs in collaboration with his wife, Miss Dixie.

Maybe our bluegrass songwriting works so well because we have such different views of Appalachia. As an outsider Miss Dixie sees these people as the hard-working, family-loving salt of the earth. As a member of the clan I see them as just the neighbors. She can see the trees, while all I can see is the forest.

The article is a fairly length piece, at a solid two pages, and worth the read. Four streaming audio files are also included featuring Tom T. and Charlie Sizemore.