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

Central Florida is home to the guys from Spayed Koolie, and Americana/country/southern rock band who borrows its name from famed 1940’s swing fiddler Spade Cooley. Fiddler Neal Phillips spent some time with us recently, talking about the heritage of his hip band who’s opened for Montgomery-Gentry, Kellie Pickler, 38 Special, and Charlie Daniels, just to name a few. “We like ...

The northern most reaches of Appalachia; the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, were the music launching pad for Cindy “Cindy G” Giejda. She started playing folk and bluegrass as a teenager. Her father, a bluegrass fiddle player himself, encouraged her to play guitar. Cindy recalls her dad helping her decide on an instrument for the school band when she was in ...

Sacramento California is home to singer/songwriter JL “Pepe” Espada, a.k.a. Banjo Bones. With a music career that spans nearly 40 years, including work in Central America, Japan and the Washington DC area, has a new record out, called Ghostly Musings From the Delta. He started playing music when he was 10, and in his first band by the time he ...

As music genre’s change, so do musicians if they hope to stay active and relevant. Rock is one of those genre’s, in recent years, that has struggled to find a groove with ever changing audiences. Bands like Wayland, priding themselves on timeless vocal melodies and crisp guitar licks, that are becoming far and few between. Formed in 2010, they were ...

Born and raised in a blue-collar section of Massapequa, Long Island in the 1950’s, Vincent Poag’s influences run deep, and include the music of Gershwin, Porter and Rogers and Hammerstein, along with crooners like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, and even 60’s icons Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Vincent got his first guitar about the age of eight. By the ...

Over the years, I have come in contact with folks who have traveled as tourists to Ireland; and I have known folks who have lived as expatriates or who have done an extended work assignment for several years in that emerald green land. Most folks who have ever trod that special place yearn for a chance to return to the ...

Mt. Solon (July 14th, 2018) – What a start to the latest installment of the annual Red Wing Roots Festival in Mt. Solon, VA! Six years ago, roots band, The Steel Wheels, along with several friends, dreamt up a groovy “hometown” festival at nearby Natural Chimneys Park. From the first year, the now capacity, three day event was a rousing ...

Balsam Range, over the past 11 years, has played themselves into perhaps one of the most solid, consistent, contemporary bluegrass acts out on the road today. The same five guys who first got together in Darren Nicholson’s (mandolin, vocals) kitchen back in 2007, are the same five guys still playing together today, and are now on tour with their ground ...

As we study the early generation of artists of this music genre we often call Americana string music we are reminded that these folks were talented and produced lasting memories. Today’s artists often point to those early performers as providing models to mold their own performances upon One particular performance style that gets mentioned again and again is the tight ...

Jeremy Sharp, McKenzie Davidson, and Brad Davidson make up the band, Center State, our ReVerb Nation band feature act for this issue. The St. Joseph and Kansas City area is where founding member Jeremy Sharp called home through the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, where he honed his craft playing with local garage rock bands performing in local dives and ...