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Here’s another review of the Tony Rice Story by Lonesome Road Review.

Until this remarkable book by Tim Stafford (a great guitarist, singer and songwriter in his own right) and Carolyn Wright, I knew little of the man who has stood as the master craftsman of the bluegrass and acoustic guitar for about 40 years, taking time to also carve out a niche as one of the finest bluegrass lead singers ever.

In short, this book—which is exceedingly well-made and attractive—is everything you ever wanted to know about a musical giant, with the material presented clearly and readably by Stafford and Wright. It will send you to your record collection for the Rice that you do have, and to eBay, County Sales or the record store for what you don’t. It’s a major piece of bluegrass and acoustic music scholarship that belongs on any music fan’s bookshelf - Aaron Keith Harris.

Read the whole review at The Lonsome Road Review

Earlier this year we brought you news of the Tony Rice biography by Caroline Wright and Tim Stafford.

Ted Lehmann has written a review of the book which is now up on his website -  The Ted Lehmann Blog.

In assessing Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story, the long awaited and recently released biography by Tim Stafford and Caroline Wright, it’s important to realize that this elusive and extremely important pioneer of modern guitar style and practitioner of wonderfully expressive singing (until he decided he really didn’t like to sing) has told his story for forty years or so through his music, and we shouldn’t expect him to achieve clarity or transparency with his words about his life’s experience or verbal analysis of who he is – Ted Lehmann.

Read the full review on the Ted Lehmann Blog.

Submitted by Steve Jackson – Victoria.

Some 450 musos and revelers descended upon Camp Eureka for a fine time of pickin’, singin’ and fiddlin’ amid delightful surroundings and surprisingly good weather.

Friday night was a great time to catch up with friends and settle in to enjoy the warmth of the open fires and intoxicating music.

Lots of jamming could be had during the day when not attending one of the 18 workshops available. I particularly enjoyed the flatpicking guitar with Kevin Purcell, who took us through the basics of how to make a solo to Hot Corn, Cold Corn, and through to the basics of crosspicking. John Ross covered a surprising amount of chord theory on the ukulele and the vivacious Sarah Buttillis versed us in gypsy violin.

Saturday night we were entertained by Hard Drive and there were many large jams in the cosy huts and around fireplaces.

The festivities peaked on Sunday afternoon with some superlative performances on the open stage. Many thanks to Ken McMaster for organising this enjoyable event.

Dates for next year:

• 18-21 Feb 2011 Blackwood Fiddlers’ Convention
• 8-11 April 2011 Yarra Junction Fiddlers’ Convention

Submitted by Peter Bruton – Victoria

This years Blackwood Fiddlers Convention has been staged, and what a wonderful weekend it was. The festival site has relocated from the Nature reserve Caravan park to the Blackwood Cricket ground. The Cricket ground proved to be an ideal campground with its surrounds of large shade trees. Pleasant weather prevailed for the whole weekend.

Workshops were many and varied, with all the Old timey and Bluegrass instruments represented. All were excellent and well presented.

As per usual the open mike spots and concerts were great with musicians coming from far and wide. Jamming opportunities were endless, carrying on into the wee hours each night.

Saturday night saw the staging of the old-time dance and a frolicking good time was had by all, young and old alike.  This was followed by the Bad-Taste concert, which sure did live up to its name, bringing howls of laughter from the attentive crowd.

The festival finished Sunday night with a very well attended jam session at Lerdies Restaurant in Blackwood’s main street.

In summary the 2nd Blackwood Fiddlers Convention was a very pleasant and enjoyable festival, thanks to the people put in the hard work to stage the event, especially Ken McMaster who is to be congratulated on his tireless effort.
Peter Bruton

A Night From Virginia USA at the Yinnar Hotel

Submitted by John Werner – Yinnar

Photos by Carolyn Boothman

The people of Yinnar and the surrounding district were treated to a wonderful evening of traditional old-time mountain music on last Wednesday when the Whitetop Mountaineers appeared in the penultimate gig of their third Australian tour, prior to heading off to the National Folk Festival in Canberra.

Following the warm-up set by local lads The Strzelecki Stringbusters, Martha & Jackson took the crowd on an aural and cultural journey back through the years to a different time and place. Renewing ties, originating from their 2009 appearance, they sang of heartache and misery, of murder and revenge and of love and eternal happiness through the intertwining stories of their home in Virginia’s culturally rich Blue Ridge Mountains.

Martha’s powerful vocals, supported by her deft banjo and guitar work, combined seamlessly with Jackson’s crystal clear tenor harmony to provide their trademark ‘mountain’ sound.

While Martha spent most of the first set on guitar, the crowd were treated to some great Monroe-style mandolin picking by Jackson. In the second set, Martha picked up her fiddle and introduced the crowd to Smokey The Rooster, a hand-made birthday present from Jackson, incorporating a rooster’s head for a scroll. To complete the cultural display, Martha danced up a storm to backing provided by Jackson on banjo, along with the Stringbuster’s John & Ray on double bass and guitar.

To close the show, the 13 piece Stringbuster ensemble squeezed on stage with the Mountaineers and ripped into the instrumental Angeline The Baker, and old favourites Will The Circle Be Unbroken and You Are My Sunshine, with the entire crowd joining in on the chorus.

Martha’s invitation to anyone in the crowd to ‘drop by if your ever in Virginia’ may sound like a well worn line when written, but it was delivered with absolute sincerity, and left no-one in doubt that a warm welcome awaits anyone who chooses to seek out traditional mountain music in its humble origins.

I ran across this review of an Australian Band from Townsville in Qld. with some bluegrass music influences called The Middle East.  The ‘About’ section of their website simply offers: ‘We’re from Townsville, Australia and we play music’ – their site is scant on detail.

Currently touring with Mumford and Sons, a band we have also posted on, the band played in Texas last week and is reviewed in  The Austin Music Source by Pete Mongillo:

…some bands settle on a fairly narrow sound and stick with it, while other dabble in different genres, forging a chameleon-like identity. Queensland, Australia-based band The Middle East falls somewhere in between. While their sound might generally fall into the hopelessly broad category of roots rock, the band is all over the map within that field, pulling from bluegrass, folk, country and blues rock - The Austin Music Source

You can read the full review here The Austin Music Source .

Town and Country Fiddler by Donal Baylor

Reviewed by G. McGrath editor, australianbluegrass.com

Town and Country Fiddler is about as good a name as one could come up with for this album as it not only describes the fiddle and guitar master responsible for it, but it conjures up great imagery of the music contained therein.

Donal Baylor is one of this country’s most respected fiddle players and one of life’s true gentlemen. Not to put too finer point on it but his guitar playing is far from ordinary also. Donal’s dexterity on both guitar and fiddle has won him honours at national picking championships and earned him great respect from his international peers. So much for the man, on to the CD.

On this album Donal plays guitar and fiddle on all but 2 of the very generous offering of 15 tracks on this album. He is also accompanied by some of this nation’s finest bluegrass musicians in Hamish Davidson on banjo, Lachlan Davidson on mandolin, Mick Harrison on banjo, Andy Baylor (Donal’s brother) on guitar, Steve Gilchrist on mandolin and Pete Fidler on Dobro. It’s an exciting collection pickers which bears out in the music.

The album opens with a 30 second teaser featuring Donal and the Davidson Brothers in a fast yet sweet rendition of the old Stanly Brother’s tune Daybreak in Dixie. It closes with a wonderful duet of When I Grow Too Old To Dream featuring Donal on fiddle and his brother Andy on guitar.

The album holds many surprises not the least of which is the title track, Howdy Forrester’s Town and Country Fiddler, which Donal does great credit to on both fiddle and guitar, as does Hamish Davidson on banjo and his brother Lachlan on mandolin.

Another gem is Marshall Wilborn’s composition Goodbye to the Blues. For this arrangement Donal has pulled in Chris Jacobs one of Australia’s most highly regarded bluegrass vocalists along with Steve Gilchrist on mandolin, Mick Harrison on banjo and Ruth Hazleton delivering some fine harmony vocals.

A track worth highlighting is Bill Monroe’s haunting Farewell to Long Hollow, again featuring Donal, Mick Harrison and Steve Gilchrist. These boys play it like it should be played – Monroe pleased would be well pleased.

There are a total of 15 tracks on the CD and all equally worth commenting on, but space prohibits. There is nothing left to say now but to urge you to go out and buy this CD. Help keep Australian bluegrass music alive. This is an album worth collecting.

For a full track listing and some sample tracks on our previous post announcing the CD’s launch. Or you could simply visit Donal’s website.

The Lonesome Road Review – Southern

Bill Emerson has a more impressive bluegrass pedigree than most. A founding member of the Country Gentlemen, Emerson has packed on the years playing with Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, co-leading an influential bluegrass band with Cliff Waldron, spending years fronting Country Current, and now appearing under his own name with Sweet Dixie, a different lineup of which previously released an album on Rebel Records…

You can read the whole review by Aaron Keith Harris on Lonesome Road Review.