The 9513 - Country Music Blog

The Grascals are royalty on the bluegrass scene, having won SPBGMA’s Bluegrass Band of the Year award in 2010, the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Emerging Artist of the Year award in 2005 and earning its Entertainer of the Year honor in both 2006 and 2007. Danny Roberts began playing guitar to back up his fiddling [...]

Continue reading "The Grascals Dream of Joining the Opry As They Approach Their 100th Appearance"

So far, 2011 has been a rough one for family bands. Within a week of each other, bluegrass acts Cherryholmes and The Peasall Sisters announced they were splitting up. While the loss of two talented groups is hard to bear, those splits can lead to something good. Consider the case of Larkin Poe, formerly two-thirds [...]

Continue reading "Larkin Poe: A Band for All Seasons"

You might know him as the former rockabilly Road King with a standing gig at Austin’s Broken Spoke. Or as a Cajun crime lord in the upcoming film The Sinner. Perhaps you’ve heard his guitar work on albums by Waylon Jennings, Ray Price or The Supersuckers. Over the past couple years, you might have run [...]

Continue reading "Jesse Dayton Offers One for the Dance Halls"

Already Winter’s Bone has been an unlikely hit this awards season. The starkly beautiful film, directed by Debra Granik, tells the story of a tenacious young woman named Ree Dolly (played fearlessly by Jennifer Lawrence) as she struggles to hold her family together after the disappearance of her meth-cooking father. Those aren’t issues that many [...]

Continue reading "High on a Mountain: Interview with Marideth Sisco"

Blending bluegrass with the diverse sounds of jazz and Celtic music, Alison Brown has made a name for herself as one of the most talented and innovative banjo players around. Her career has included stints playing with Alison Krauss and Michelle Shocked, along with several solo albums. Most recently, she released The Company You Keep [...]

Continue reading "Alison Brown: Mixing Business with Banjo"

Singer/songwriter Lori McKenna likes to think of herself as a housewife first. Married to her husband for 22 years (she has known him since third grade), mother of five children, and life-long citizen of small town Stoughton, Massachusetts, she takes pride in her home and family more than anything else. At age 27, she began [...]

Continue reading "It’s Got To Be Honest: Interview with Lori McKenna"

It’s good to be Ricky Skaggs. The young boy who once shared a stage with Bill Monroe is now the head of his own record label, can play just about anything with strings, and has two excellent, wildly different albums—the folk release Songs My Dad Loved and the pop-gospel album Mosaic—nominated for Grammys. He recently [...]

Continue reading "His Treasure Chest Runneth Over: Ricky Skaggs On His Grammy Nominations and Upcoming Tour"

When you’re talking with guitar legend Steve Wariner, the influence of his mentor of Chet Atkins is never far away. It was Atkins that signed Wariner to RCA Records and it was there he would start off a career that would reel off nine #1’s and a long line of Top 10 hits, including “Your [...]

Continue reading "Talking Holiday & Guitar Spirit with Steve Wariner"

In the press release for his new album, James Otto is quoted as saying that he’s the symbolic “love child of Ronnie Milsap and Barry White.” Barry White’s deep soulful baritone became synonymous with groovy love-making songs in R&B and if there was ever an album that tried hard to be the soundtrack to getting [...]

Continue reading "James Otto Talks About His Place In Country Soul"

With musical influences that include jazz, country, classic, pop, swing and bluegrass, it’s not very easy to quickly describe The Belleville Outfit. It’s extremely easy to get hooked by their music, however. The young sextet plays with both virtuosity and energy and is quickly becoming known for a live act that’s won them fans across [...]

Continue reading "The Belleville Outfit’s Big Future"