LaTresa Smith was born into a musical family. Her father, a Christian minister, and his minister brothers, all from Alabama, toured and performed southern Gospel music in their band, The Hester Brothers. LaTresa recalled as a young girl listening to bluegrass music on Saturday nights in an old store front in Mississippi and dreaming of having a bluegrass band of ...

Guitarist Jay Elle is a singer and a songwriter. And while he writes a lot of pop style songs, and is often billed as pop singer/songwriter, he says his songs are a bit on the mellow side these days. Jay suggests that you could classify him as more of an urban-folk musician. “I play a nylon string Ovation guitar which ...

At present, Gina Furtado is most known for her banjo work with Chris Jones and the Night Drivers. That’s all about to change as she sets out this summer on a solo career with her own band. She’s as innovative with her songwriting as she is with her banjo playing. She released her debut album, True Colors, in September 2017, ...

Singer Songwriter Maureen Toth was born and raised in Huntington Station, New York. After high school, she attended Boston University where she studied voice in her spare time, falling in love with that form of expression. She eventually ended up in Los Angeles for work, but continued to pursue her interest in music. “Soon after I started playing guitar I ...

“An unspoken tradition is not a written law. It’s a deep understanding shared between people, rooted in the past, and grown by human connection and emotion. One forms through experience and creates a way to pay homage to what’s come before, while allowing for forward motion,” reads the opening lines to a press release from Western North Carolina’s bluegrass band, ...

Jim and Lynna Woolsey from Southern Indiana have been playing music together for over 30 years, but it took a 2014 project for Jim to finally convince Lynna to record a CD with him. Jim, the songwriter, had been writing music for a long time but it was always a life long dream to actually record a CD of his ...

Kristi Stanley might have married into “Bluegrass royalty” but that certainly doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a voice and style all her own. Kristi is married to Ralph Stanley II, son of bluegrass pioneer Ralph Stanley. Ralph has recently taken over his father’s band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, and leadership of the annual home town festival, Hills Of Home, which ...

Reine Johansson started playing guitar when he was 11 years old. As he grew, up he became involved in various bands playing various genres of music including hard rock and blues through his mid-20s. He quit the music business for a while to become an actor and do musical theater. A few years ago he picked up his guitar again ...

Violinist Yale Strom is Professor and Artist-in-Residence in the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University, and is considered one of the world’s leading ethnographer-artists of Klezmer and Romani music and history. His research and findings were instrumental in forming the repertoire in 1981 for his klezmer band, Hot Pstromi. Strom has composed original music for theater, film and ...

Leif Karlstrom and Adam Roszkiewicz, two members of the award-winning progressive roots grass band Front Country, combine to explore a duo side project known as Small Town Therapy. The two friends and musicians have created a “genre-bending music” that blends acoustic jazz and classical-influenced original compositions into a new adventure in string music. Their new 13 track record, Dreams and Circumstances, is ...