More detached notes (update)

Deering Banjos announce that Dan Walsh, English clawhammerist of Irish descent, was on Deering Live tonight (Thurs. 26 May), beginning at 8.00 p.m. Irish time; he was previously featured on 10 Sept. 2020. The interview will be available on YouTube. Themes up for discussion include two that have been raised on the Deering blog in the past week: 'Should clawhammer be a genre or a technique?' and 'Can you play clawhammer banjo on a resonator banjo?' Deering also provide a display of their range of clawhammer banjos.

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Tray Wellington, who was featured on Deering Live two weeks ago (see the BIB for 12 May), is interviewed by Tristan Scroggins on the Bluegrass Situation about his new album Black banjo.

Update 31 May: The album is reviewed by David Morris, with a playlist of samples from the tracks, on Bluegrass Today.

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The International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) announce in their latest e-newsletter that applications are now open for the IBMA's new Internation Band Performance Grant programme to provide financial assistance to bands travelling from abroad to the 2022 IBMA World of Bluegrass and help to establish a 2023 follow-up tour in the United States. IBMA will also be creating more performance opportunities for international bands at the World of Bluegrass, including a stage in the new International Pavilion. Applications close on 1 June.

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Ashby Frank, who toured Ireland some years back as mandolinist with the Special Consensus and has since become an acclaimed songwriter and first-call for anyone who needs a top-flight mandolin player, has now joined the artist roster of the Mountain Home Music Company and is preparing an album with the help of many friends in the bluegrass world. A new single from it, the 1991 Peter Rowan song 'Midnight highway', can be heard on Bluegrass Today, and will be released tomorrow (27 May).

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Also on the Mountain Home artist roster, Chris Jones & the Night Drivers are now celebrating six songs - all written by Chris, and all released as successive singles from their album Make each second last - that have gone to no. 1 on the bluegrass radio charts. The photo at the bottom of this post shows the band (Mark Stoffel, Marshall Wilborn, Chris, and Grace van 't Hof) with Mountain Home's Ty Gilpin (centre). More details are on the Mountain Home press release.

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Jon Weisberger was for a long time a Night Driver, and played bass on the band's first tour in Ireland. He was the first recipient of an IBMA Songwriter of the Year award, and is now a producer for Mountain Home. He and Justin Hiltner have collaborated on an EP of gospel music, Room at the table, due for release tomorrow (Fri. 27 May), and they have released audio of a single from it, 'Send me, Lord, send me', which can be heard on Bluegrass Today, where both of them explain how the song came to be written.

© Richard Hawkins