Americana Music Magazine – Bluegrass, Roots, Folk, Blues, and Old-Time

Matt Westin found his voice and career direction in some truly unexpected places. He was born and raised in a blue-collar, middle class suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and ended up studying at a prestigious institution in that neck of the woods, Carnegie Mellon University, with a career in engineering on his horizon. While there, however, he began to find music, ...

As a maker of music, creator of art, and cultivator of countless musical careers via his talent as a booking agent, Karl Mullen has been making his creative mark for more than six decades now. And even after all that time, his latest effort, F EAR LES S, has been hailed as his best solo music to date. Karl’s musical ...

Just call him Izzie. After a youth spent playing in bands, and the early 2000s playing and recording with his current Caravan comrades under a different name, the driving force behind his eponymous blues rock Caravan is experiencing a musical renaissance many former rockers can only dream about. In their previous incarnation, Izzie and company gave it all they had, ...

For more than 15 years Dustin Arbuckle and Tom Page have made music together in the Wichita, Kansas area, beginning with a one-gig country outfit that connected them subsequently as a duo, with Dustin on harmonica and Tom on guitar. After about six years they felt the need to push the boundaries of what they were doing. “We hit a ...

Who could have predicted that the music world would have to shift in a digital direction, in a hurry, like it did in 2020? For those musicians who were able to dig in and hold on, many found a way to use the opportunity to create new music and develop new avenues of sharing. John Driskell Hopkins, a founding member ...

Trey Hensley has for years won over bluegrass fans with his signature smoking guitar style. Yet outside the niche of bluegrass, music lovers of all kinds are drawn to his playing and his music. Call it bluegrass, blues, rock, jamband music—it doesn’t matter. When asked how he’d define his style of flatpicking, Hensley chuckles and simply responds, “My style is ...

John McDonough spent most of his last 30 years in Austin, Texas as a part-time musician/full-time psychotherapist in one of the most intensely creative cities in the world. Nine years ago he committed himself to the full-time music life. During that time he has written and recorded five CDs (including his latest, Second Chances), played over 500 gigs, performed in ...

For almost four decades, Richard Lynch has been cultivating the legacy of greats like George Strait, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and the list goes on. He has a deep appreciation of the power of inherited tradition, as his passion for music dates back to his earliest days, when his dad, country musician Woody Lynch, gave him his first chance to ...

It’s Been A Long Time is the title of the debut album by Hugh Phillips, and the addition of one word to that phrase might describe the singer-songwriter’s arrival as an artist: It’s been a long time coming. In 2016, after a lengthy career as a Toyota auto technician, including 11 years as the owner of his own repair shop, ...

Cory Keefe my seem like a “new” artist, with his debut album, I’ll Keep It Country, just out in April 2021. He did, however, grow up around music, and performed professionally after high school around his native Florida Gulf Coast stomping grounds. But he really “got serious” about it only three years ago. With his twin brother Dustin as his ...