My guest this week is Tony Trischka, who returns to Bluegrass Jam Along to chat about his superb new record Earl Jam. We talk about Tony receiving a thumb drive containing 200 unheard recordings of Earl Scruggs jamming with John Hartford, and his amazement at not just how many tunes were on there that he'd…
Read MoreToday – June 8th – is Tony Rice's birthday. To celebrate, I'm reposting the chat I had with Alison Krauss as part of the 'Church Street Blues' 40th anniversary celebrations last year. The final episodes ended up being almost 5 hours long, so I thought it would be fun to re-post this as a standalone…
Read MoreMy guest this week is Jacob Jolliff, who joins me to talk about his wonderful new record Instrumentals 2: Mandolin Mysteries We talk about the process of writing the record and how many of the tunes began on piano rather than mandolin, plus the great band Jacob assembled to record and tour the album. We…
Read MoreMy guest this week is Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, who returns to chat about her great new record 'I Built a World', which comes out on Friday May 24th. This is Bronwyn's first record as a lead singer and we chat about her song choices, the musicians she chose for the record, the wonderful line up of…
Read MoreMy guest this week is Oliver Burkeman, best-selling author of the book 'Four Thousand Weeks – Time Management for Mortals.' 'Four Thousand Weeks' isn't a book about bluegrass, or American acoustic music…or even about music. But, it addresses so many of the the things that can trip us up and stop us from making the…
Read MoreMy guest this week is legendary sound engineer Dave Sinko. Dave joins me to talk about his 17 year collaboration with Punch Brothers, including running their live sound, from using mics and pickups on every instrument, right down to single mic shows (and most points in between). We also chatted about Dave's long standing collaboration…
Read MoreMy guest this week is Stephen Mougin, guitarist in The Sam Bush Band and founder of Dark Shadow Recording. In this episode we talk about Stephen's work as a band coach. We chat about his training as a vocal teacher, what bands should be working on, including how they should be rehearsing, why preparing for…
Read MoreKristina R. Gaddy joins me again to celebrate the paperback release of her fascinating book “Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History”. We chat about the reception to the book's publication in hardback, what information has come to light since publication, Kristina's hopes that her book will inspire others to pick up where she…
Read More**This interview was originally posted in September 2022** My guest this week is Kristina R. Gaddy, who joins us to discuss her fascinating book “Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History”. We chat about how she came to write the book and some of the key discoveries she made along the way, in particular…
Read MoreMy guest this week is Matt Glaser, Artistic Director of Berklee's Center for American Roots Music. Matt joins me to celebrate 15 years of the program, but also to delve into some of the themes of his superb Keynote Speech at IBMA 2023. In the speech, Matt sets out the idea that American music can…
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