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After hearing of Jim Mills’s departure from Ricky Skaggs band Kentucky Thunder last month, news has emerged that Justin Moses recently of the Dan Tyminski Band will take up the banjo duties.

Justin Moses is a multi instrumentalist at home on the mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, dobro and bass.  He’s been playing music since the age of six and began traveling with his family’s gospel group.In his teenage years he entered and won several regional contests, on multiple instruments.  Just  after graduating high school he helped form the East Tennessee band Blue Moon Rising in 2000.  Justin then went on to become a founding member of the band Sierra Hull & Highway 111, performing with Sierra in 2005.  Justin released a solo instrumental CD Dusty Roads in 2006. He spent time with bands Blue Moon Rising and NewFound Road in 2006 and 2007 and more recently with the Dan Tyminski Band.  Justin made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2008, and has become an in-demand session player.

Ricky Skaggs has a new album soon to be released. Skaggs is one of  Country Music’s best-selling artists and is no stranger in Bluegrass circles with an string of very successful albums in both camps.

Skaggs, a 14-time Grammy winner, has worked closely with fellow Grammy winner Gordon Kennedy, known for his work with Eric Clapton, Garth Brooks and Bonnie Raitt.

Skaggs’s  describes Mosaic as:

...an album that mixes elements of Country music with Beatle-esque melody and lyrics which speak to my faith, making music that is in my head and in my heart. The title track, Mosaic, signals all to realize that no matter how small we feel sometimes, we all have a unique place in life.

With Mosaic, Skaggs and Kennedy take mandolin, banjo, acoustic guitar and violin and mix them with percussion,  hammered dulcimer, strings section, bagpipes, bouzouki, electric guitar, keyboards, slide guitar and more. Mosaic is due out August 24 on Skaggs Family Records.

The musical make up of this album may well signal a new direction for Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, after the recent departure of long time banjo player Jim Mills in pursuit of his own career a short time ago.

Does this album see Skaggs returning to the Country Music arena?

Ricky Skaggs has announced that his long time band member and friend Jim Mills is departing the band, Kentucky Thunder.

Jim Mills has been a member of Ricky Skaggs’ band, Kentucky Thunder, for the past 13 years.

As a banjo player and musician Jim has been tremendously successful in his own right. He has won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Instrumental Performer of the Year several times. He leaves to focus on his musical career and develop his music business.

I have been on the road for most of my life.  It will feel good to control my own schedule and spend more time focusing on my banjo business - Jim Mills.

Jim Mills is noted for his traditional hard-driving bluegrass style and has recorded  two albums of his own, Bound To Ride and My Dixie Home. He has also been voted IBMA’s  Banjo Player Of The Year 6 times by his peers.

I am very happy for him and supportive of his decision, although it will be a challenge to replace such a talented musician.  “Smilin’” Jim Mills will always be remembered with affection and joy, and we will be sure to miss him in the days to come - Ricky Skaggs.

Going 333-feet below the ground, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder along with Cherryholmes, Mountain Heart and 18 South will be featured on a new musical adventure series, bringing bluegrass music to national US audiences.

This special series, Bluegrass Underground, will be videotaped in the acoustically pure Volcano Room, deep inside Cumberland Caverns near McMinnville, Tennessee.  The one-of-a-kind performance will be on 22nd May at 1:00 pm.  Todd Mayo, president of Loblolly Ventures, the production company for Bluegrass Underground, says his series is, “A little bit bluegrass, a little bit underground.  Tennessee abounds with great music and great natural beauty and both will be on display underground this May.”

An Interview by Andrew Dansby for the Houston Belief.

For 13 years Ricky Skaggs has enjoyed a roots renaissance, making albums of breakneck bluegrass and lovingly assembled gospel music, hand-played on acoustic instruments with some of the best pickers he could find. Last year he released Solo: Songs My Dad Loved, a personal project that found Skaggs singing and impeccably playing various acoustic instruments, but he did it alone. True to its title, the songs on the recording were favorites of the late Hobert Skaggs. Ricky’s father put a mandolin in a 5-year-old’s hands and put him on the road from Kentucky to Nashville and to country stardom and a bluegrass revival that began shortly before the death of the genre’s founder and father, Bill Monroe. Skaggs talked about his journey.

Read the full interview on the Houston Belief Website.

News from the USA’s Dove Awards is that Ricky Skaggs has been nominated for a 2010 Dove Award in the Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year category.  The song This World Is Not My Home by Albert Brumley is on his newest album Solo: Songs My Dad Loved.

Also nominated is Dailey & Vincent for Bluegrass Recorded Song of the Year for On the Other Side, from their Rounder Records album, Brothers From Different Mothers.

In addition, Darrin Vincent has received a nomination as producer of Lord, Bless This House by Nothin’ Fancy, which is up for Bluegrass Album of the Year.

The 41st Annual GMA Dove Awards Show will take place on April 21.

Raconteurs, Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe.

Ever wonder what it was like during the shooting and recording of Old Enough featuring the Raconteurs, Ricky Skaggs & Ashley Monroe?

Well here’s your chance to see behind the scenes at the Ocean Way Studios during this amazing collaboration.

On his latest album, Songs My Dad Loved, bluegrass master Ricky Skaggs revisits the Appalachian folk ballads and country gospel tunes that his father Hobert used to play around the house during his formative years in Kentucky.

To call it a deeply personal collection would be underestimating the emotion and effort Skaggs poured into this project – he sang and played every instrument himself, painstakingly overdubbing acoustic and electric guitars, banjos, piano, bass, mandocello and, of course, his signature mandolins.

Read the full review on Gibson.com