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Alister Atkin (Atkin Guitars) – Building new guitars with old souls

My guest this week is Alister Atkin of Atkin Guitars. I've been following Atkin's progress for a few years now and have been blown away by the quality of guitars they're producing. They combine some cutting edge techniques with a bespoke approach, to bring out the uniqueness of every guitar they make. As Alister puts…

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Bluegrass Briefing – July 22nd 2024

Welcome to this week’s Bluegrass Briefing, a weekly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. News and Announcements (Church Street News) IBMA award nominees Releases (The Grass is New) David Grisman & the Rounder Album Band –…

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Happy Traum (Homespun Tapes) repost

Last week we lost Happy Traum, one of the shining lights of acoustic music for over half a century. It’s hard to fully grasp, in our online world where everything is right there whenever we need it, just what an enormous contribution Happy and the Homespun team made to helping people learn roots and acoustic…

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Roger Siminoff – Celebrating Lloyd Loar and the Gibson F5 Mandolin

My guest this week is Roger Siminoff. Not only is Roger an authority on instrument making, the physics of music and tap tuning, he's also an expert on the life and work of Lloyd Loar. Loar worked at Gibson in the early 1920s and oversaw the production of some truly remarkable, game changing instruments –…

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Bluegrass Briefing – July 15th 2024

Welcome to this week’s Bluegrass Briefing, a weekly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. News and Announcements (Church Street News) IBMA Black String Band Symposium Volunteer at IBMA Email volunteer@ibma.org for more info Releases (The Grass…

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Celebrating Bela Fleck’s ‘Drive’ with Chris Eldridge (Punch Brothers/Mighty Poplar)

My guest on the podcast this week is Chris Eldridge, guitarist with Punch Brothers and Mighty Poplar. Chris is not only one of my favourite guitarists, he's also one of my favourite people I've had on as a guest, so I'm delighted to welcome him back to Bluegrass Jam Along to celebrate the podcast's 400th…

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Bluegrass Briefing – July 8th 2024

Welcome to this week’s Bluegrass Briefing, a weekly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. Podcast News  Gabe Witcher interview Brittany Haas interview Releases (The Grass is New) The Grass is (mostly) New 2024 playlist Scroll on…

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Brittany Haas on joining Punch Brothers

My guest on the podcast this week is Brittany Haas, fiddle player with Hawktail and, now, Punch Brothers! I interviewed Gabe Witcher last June, a few days after he played his final shows with Punch Brothers at Telluride. Almost exactly a year later to the day I spoke with Brittany to chat about joining the…

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Bluegrass Briefing – July 1st 2024

Welcome to this week’s Bluegrass Briefing, a weekly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. News and announcements – Church Street News  IBMA International Booth info  Contact Christopher Howard Williams (IBMA board member) via the contact form…

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Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer’s Bluegrass Journey

My guests this week are Ruth Oxenberg and Rob Schumer. They join me to talk about a very special series of concerts they've curated called Bluegrass on Hudson, which are happening at The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, in New York's Hudson Valley. But we start by talking about a wonderful…

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