News from the Mother Country

Greg Blake (above), powerful lead singer and guitarist, has (thanks to John Nyhan) toured here several times with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, brought his own Greg Blake Band over in January 2018, and toured Ireland for three weeks as a solo artist earlier this year, so many people over here should be interested in his 'other life' back home.

In an interview with Dave Berry on Bluegrass Today, Greg talks at length about his Midwest-based band Real Country (a name which older BIB readers may recall was the name George and Thaddeus Kaye used for their bluegrass-plus-country band in Ireland in the early 1970s). There's an hour-long video of Greg and the band at a live show, together with a Spotify player giving brief snatches of the songs on Greg's album Songs of heart and home.

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The IBMA announces the full lineup for the 'Wide Open' two days of this year's World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, NC. Links for ticket booking and a full press release are on the e-newsletter.

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The August 2019 issuse of the Bluegrass Standard magazine (free and available in mobile and desktop editions) is out, with a cover picture of Jesse McReynolds, whose 90th birthday was celebrated at the beginning of last month. More details are on this e-newsletter.

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Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley, headliners of the 2016 Dunmore East festival, will release their third album, World full of blues, on 4 Oct. on the Compass Records label. It can be pre-ordered, and a teaser trailer can be seen on YouTube.

LATE EXTRA: Nick Dumas, mandolinist with the Special Consensus, and his fiddling fiancee Hana Rass (who have visited Ireland together) were married in Wisconsin last Saturday at the Fiddler's Farm, the venue that they operate together. Four photos and a two-and-a-half-minute video clip of the happy couple, the Special C., and friends playing 'East Virginia', are in John Lawless's feature on Bluegrass Today. Congratulations and all good wishes to Nick and Hana.