Beer, bluegrass, occasional other stuff
Seems like it was just last year. Probably because it was. It seemed to rain every weekend in the spring and summer of 2018. We called it “Festival Season,” but truth be told, it was more like monsoon season. Looking back, it seemed like there was only one truly perfect weather day — the Saturday of Grey Fox, when it was bright, sunny, dry, and perfect shirtsleeves weather. It was a Goldilocks day — not[…]
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Someday, a few years down the road, some of these songs will be standards in Stringdusters’ sets. And some will be forgotten . . .
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The new album is officially out on May 3, but the band is celebrating early with a string of album release shows that comes through Harrisburg Saturday night. The Flat Wheels will open that night upstairs at the Federal Taphouse on Second Street.
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“Tim O’Brien Band,” his first album with his current band, might just be his finest effort since Red on Blonde, his iconic 1996 bluegrass tribute to Bob Dylan’s music.
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When you review an album, you need to listen to it a number of times. So it is not necessarily unusual that we’ve listened to Mile Twelve’s upcoming release, “City on a Hill,” enough in the past few weeks that we can sing along to all the songs. But we’ve listened to this one far more than we do for most reviews. Yes, because it is that good, though that was not exactly our motivation.[…]
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This travel guide to festivals in the Middle Atlantic States was written with British bluegrass fans in mind who might want a sidetrip to experience American bluegrass in a festival setting while visiting the cities in the NYC-Philly-D.C. corridor. It is not inclusive. There are a plethora of other fine festivals in the region. We looked for larger festivals with artists with names that a fan from across the pond would recognize. I[…]
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If you were fortunate enough to see Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen live in 2018, chances are a lot of the songs on the band’s recent release, “If You Can’t Stand the Heat,” might sound a little familiar. There is a good reason for that. The band recorded the album, released in January of this year, last March. A lot of the songs on it have been on FSDK’s set lists since then. Of course[…]
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Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in The British Bluegrass News. The UK tour mentioned in the story actually got underway yesterday. It’s early January, and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is enjoying a brief break in what has been a very busy schedule for her and her Mile Twelve bandmates when we catch up with her for a little chat about their plan for the new year. The band toured relentlessly in 2018, playing more than 100[…]
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FSDK delivers jammy set as they celebrate 10 years as a band with a two-day live recording run in Westminster, Md. Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen had just finished Lena (Leah By Permission), a song off of the new album, “If You Can’t Stand the Heat,” when bass player Jeremy Middletown launched into the very familiar bass riff of “Whipping Post.” The crowd, there for Solivan’s bluegrass stylings, thought it was a joke. Why not?[…]
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a press release. We did recently write a profile of Mile Twelve for the British Bluegrass News which will appear on this site once the magazine is out in print. We will also be reviewing the new album in the near future and will share that here. We can say, having heard several of the songs on this album performed live already, we really look forward to this release. February 8,[…]
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