Beer, bluegrass, occasional other stuff
It was stretch day Friday at the 76th Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival. The bi-annual festival, which has been happening since 1979, has a reputation as one of the top traditional bluegrass festivals in the country.The McCoury brothers tell stories about chasing girls there when they were teenagers tagging along to their dad’s gigs. All the greats have played there, including Bill himself. The promoters are not afraid to push the envelope now and again, though. A[…]
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Call it a rookie mistake. It was our first visit to DelFest. We’d never heard of Trampled by Turtles. You might say we didn’t know any better. Lame excuse, to be sure. But we were heading home Sunday night. We’d not known about the magical late night sets at DelFest, so we didn’t have tickets for the Traveling McCourys’ customary sendoff. So we figured we’d skip the last act on the main stage and get[…]
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Prior to his show last night at Elk Creek Cafe & Aleworks, banjo picking poet Danny Barnes sat down with Brewgrass Chronicle editor Chris A. Courogen to talk about his music, his upcoming appearance at DelFest, where he will perform with David Grisman and Sam Grisman, his latest album, chatty audiences, and the story behind what is perhaps his best known song — Get it While You Can. Here is that conversation:
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Festy 8 was a media nightmare, at least for us. Internet connectivity issues resulted in a number of interviews falling through because we could not connect with publicists who were coordinating artists’ schedules. One interview that worked out was with Miss Emi Sunshine, a 13-year-old girl with a grown up talent. It was an interesting conversation. We talked about what is like to be a child star, life on the road, and her fascination with[…]
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Like a lot of bands, the Jakobs Ferry Stragglers could use some help producing a new CD. Like a lot of bands, they used one of those go-fund-music type sites to raise capital for a previous project. Gary Antol has no idea how a lot of other bands feel about those sorts of fundraising campaigns, but he knows how he feels. “I did one of those two years ago for our second studio album. It[…]
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Genuine. It’s a word Andy Falco uses a lot when you talk to him about the music he makes with The Infamous Stringdusters. “The most important thing we can do is just stay focused on making the music that’s the most genuine to us,” says Falco, who was on the phone from back home in Long Island, N.Y., where he was getting ready to depart for The Stringdusters’ appearance at the Strings and Sol in[…]
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There is no question about Larry Keel’s bluegrass chops. Born into a family of musicians on both sides, he began playing guitar at the age of seven and by the time he was eight he began playing at fiddlers conventions and bluegrass gatherings. Over the years he has on a laundry list of bluegrass competitions, both individually on guitar and with Magraw Gap. one of his early projects, which also included banjo player Will Lee.[…]
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You have to really love playing bluegrass to play a room like the Grotto Pub. It’s not that they don’t try. They have decent sound equipment, one of those little systems with an iPad app to control it. But the speakers are aimed askew, an effort, I am guessing, to reach the corners of the room, which is dominated by two big pillars that sit what you might think of as center stage, second row.[…]
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There is a certain synchronicity between the start of baseball spring training and what is going down Saturday night at the Abbey Bar in Harrisburg. Those ballplayers down in Florida, or out in Arizona, have an extremely busy summer ahead. Over the course of 187 days, they will play 162 games. That works out to 15 days off in roughly six months. Sure, they will get a couple more days off for rainouts, but the[…]
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Larry Keel is headed back to the Elk Creek Cafe and Aleworks on Saturday. It will be the second year in a row that he’s played that intimate little room in Milheim, Pa. in late February. It’s a pattern Keel needs to put an end to. Not because Elk Creek Cafe is a small venue. No, there are few places better to go for a night of live music. The food — farm to table[…]
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