Past visitors win IBMA awards (update)

Last night (or early this morning by Irish time) Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers (left), who headlined the Omagh festival four weeks ago, received two IBMA awards - for Entertainer of the Year and Collaborative Recording of the Year. Sideline, who toured here in July, also received an award: their recording 'Thunder Dan', written by Josh Manning, was Song of the Year (see this release by their record label).

Among other former visitors to Ireland, Missy Raines has now won Bass Player of the Year eight times and also headed the group that won this year's Instrumental Recording award; Michael Cleveland won Fiddler of the Year for the twelfth time and his band Flamekeeper is Instrumental Group of the Year; Brooke Aldridge won Female Vocalist; Phil Leadbetter won the Dobro award for the third time; and Claire Lynch's Gonna sing, gonna shout won the Gospel Recording award. A full list of the awards has been posted by John Lawless on Bluegrass Today.

Update 28 Sept.: More artists who have performed in Ireland in the past can be seen in the fine photos taken by Frank Baker at the awards show and published on Bluegrass Today.

Update 2 Oct.: Thanks to Dave Byrne jr of mygrassisblue.com for gently pointing out that 'Thunder Dan' was written by Josh Manning and not 'John' as this post erroneously stated when it was first published.