US news - mainly about past visitors

Fast Track have had a new single, 'Heartbreak and trouble', released by the Engelhardt Music Group (EMG). The song can be heard on John Lawless's feature on Bluegrass Today and on YouTube. More details are on the press releases from EMG and Wilson Pickins.

Two excellent on-stage sets by Fast Track, filmed early in 2020 when Jesse Brock was with them on mandolin, can be seen on YouTube: 1 and 2. In the BIB editor's view, this is pretty well exactly how a bluegrass band should act and sound.

*

For admirers of the late Tom T. Hall and the music of Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road, the band has recently had a video released by Pinecastle Records of the song 'Who’s gonna tell the story', written by Mark Brinkman and David Stewart. It can be watched on Bluegrass Today and YouTube.

*

Bob Denton, co-organiser with Andy Lambert of the three Irish Old Time Gatherings held so far in Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare, announces on the FOAOTMAD news blog (23 Apr.) that he will be in London 10-18 May and keen to play both old-time and Irish music.

*

Later this year Charlie Poole (1892-1931) will be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. He was one of the most popular among commercially-recorded rural musicians of the 1920s; his three-finger banjo style was influenced by 'classical'/ ragtime banjo-playing; and the controlled, tight-knit sound of his North Carolina Ramblers band contrasted with his haphazard lifestyle. John Lawless's news item on Bluegrass Today includes two recordings from YouTube.

*

Ken Perlman, master of 'melodic clawhammer' banjo, announces that the last two online live instructional banjo workshops in his current 'Clawhammer Clinic' series will be 'Arranging a song or simple melody for performance, clawhammer style' on Mon. 2 May, and 'Up-the-neck "melodic" fingering forms that feature 5th-string fretting' on Mon. 23 May. Ken can also be seen on 1 May in a free online live-stream concert from the Greenwich Village Folk Festival.

*

Kyle O'Brien of the state of Colorado announces that he and Chance McCoy (who toured Ireland in June 2019) recorded, mixed, and mastered ten original songs in two weeks at McCoy's West Virginia home studio and farm, to produce the new album Country pie, which can now be pre-ordered. McCoy was formerly a member of Old Crow Medicine Show, whose latest album, Paint this town, is reviewed on No Depression by Henry Carrigan.

*

Chicago's Henhouse Prowlers, in their 'Bluegrass Ambassadors' role, will be introducing schoolchildren to the music of North Carolina masters this week at the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, NC, and rounding off their stay with a concert at the Center on Thurs. 28 Apr.

© Richard Hawkins