Industrial strength bluegrass - in print and on record

Thanks to East Public Relations for their press release marking the issue of a book and an album both commemorating an area of the US that played an important role in the development of bluegrass music. The book, Industrial strength bluegrass: southwestern Ohio's musical legacy, is edited by Fred Bartenstein and Curtis W. Ellison and published by the University of Illinois Press in their 'Music in American Life' series, which are both strong recommendations in themselves. The album, under the same title, is being issued by Smithsonian Folkways, and a track from it, 'Readin', Rightin' [sic], Route 23' by Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers, can be heard (and the record pre-ordered) on BandCamp.

The book Industrial strength bluegrass joins Tim Newby's Bluegrass in Baltimore: the hard drivin' sound and its legacy and Kip Lornell's Capital Bluegrass: hillbilly music meets Washington, DC as studies of the hotbeds of bluegrass in its first decades.