Wow! This is Americana Rhythm’s 100th issue. It is going on 13+ years we’ve been writing essays about our favorite genre of music—the music that Virginian Ralph Stanley once described as, “That music they call bluegrass”. Of course, in a different setting it is that music my mother called “string-music” when she and I, as a child, listened to the ...

For 25-year-old Jake Ybarra (pronounced “e-BAR-a”), the first step on his creative journey came in Harlingen, Texas, where he was born into a musical household. With a classically trained pianist for a mother, a semi-professional horn player for a dad, and a couple of guitar-playing brothers, music was constantly in young Jake’s ears. When he was eight, the family moved ...

Since his father’s passing in 2004, singer/guitarist Danny Paisley has preserved and advanced the tradition of classic bluegrass begun by his dad, Bob Paisley, who, along with Ted Lundy, performed originally as the Southern Mountain Boys, then later as The Southern Grass, the latter of which became quite popular on the festival circuit. The band was made up mostly of ...

Hailing from Florida and currently playing with the Radio Ramblers with Joe Mullins, fiddler Jason Barie got an early start on his musical road. Starting at age 10, he took classical lessons at school, but his dad had something else in mind. “Dad found a little music store in Tampa called the Bluegrass Parlor, which offered lessons on all of ...

Did you ever enjoy something so much that you wanted it to never end? That is the way an Americana string music festival affects me. The season is just getting started for us here at Americana Rhythm and as I return to earth from my trip to Merlefest a month or so ago, I am already itching in anticipation for ...

Unless Daryl Mosley is on the road touring, he spends the majority of time hanging out in Waverly, Tennessee. It’s a quaint, Mayberryesque community just west of Nashville where he grew up. As a songwriter, it’s the perfect nest for inspiring ideas – real, salt-of-the-earth people living day to day life with all the joys and sorrow that come with ...

If you met Allen Shadd at a bluegrass jam or backstage at a festival, you might never guess that he’s breathing rarified air in an elite club of only four people in the world—he has won, three times, the National Flatpicking Guitar Championship in Winfield, Kansas. Shadd carries himself in a casual manner, often pointing out his own perceived weaknesses. ...

Growing up in the mountains of Western North Carolina, Darren Nicholson grew up with music as a staple of life. “They taught music in the schools as a regular part of the curriculum,” he recalled. “Music and dance was just part of the culture here. Just about everybody in my family played bluegrass and country music; and this was long ...

When a group of musicians get together and says to each other; let form a band, typically, there is lot that goes into making that decision into a reality. As well as months of rehearsals to hone in on the chemistry of the band mates, cohesiveness of their repertoire, and the general business of being a band all take time. ...

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul.” Martha Graham “Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience.” Lyall Watson “It doesn’t matter if I’m off the beat. It doesn’t matter if I’m snapping to the rhythm. It doesn’t matter if I look ...