Preserving The Tradition of Bluegrass Into The Future

Have another helping of Irish stew or corned beef and cabbage. Wash it down with a pint of Guinness, green food coloring optional. Then continue your Saint Patrick’s Day celebration by listening to traditional Irish tunes.More than a few should sound familiar to Bluegrass fans. When it comes to influences on American music, the Grass literally is greener because of contributions from the Emerald Isle. First came the fiddle, easier than most instruments to take on board ship a

In a moment when most young musicians are learning through screens—isolated, headphone-deep, and algorithm-directed—the work of the Ozark Mountain Music Association feels almost countercultural. Here, music is taught face-to-face. Instruments are acoustic. Learning happens in rooms, on porches, and on courthouse squares. And the goal isn’t virality—it’s continuity.   “We are event-oriented,” said Wendy Wright, executive director of the Ozark Mountain Music Association. “Most

She’s one of the most respected voices in Bluegrass and Americana, yet Dale Ann Bradley is as down-to-earth as your next-door neighbor. From her home in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in the same county where she grew up, Dale Ann walks a line between two worlds. One is the familiar place of her childhood, and the other is on stage in front of her adoring fans. She’s equally at home in either place.  Dale Ann got her first guitar when she was 14, and she began singing in front of liv

Sara Bradley, the acclaimed chef behind Freight House in Paducah, Kentucky, has become one of the most recognizable culinary voices to emerge from the region in recent years.    Raised in Paducah, Bradley grew up surrounded by family traditions that blended her Jewish maternal heritage with her father’s Appalachian background. This upbringing instilled in her an appreciation for seasonal, locally sourced ingredients, and the resourcefulness that defines Appalachian cooking. 

Lathemtown, a small, unincorporated community in North Georgia, is the kind of place where cows outnumber streetlights, and where people grow up knowing every neighbor by name.    This is the place that shaped singer-songwriter Kurt Lee Wheeler — first as the son of a cattleman and homemaker, then as a musician who would one day return to its soil in search of the stories he left behind. When Wheeler talks about his hometown, his voice settles into an easy rhythm, the kind th

No conversation about today's preservationists of Appalachian string band music would be complete unless it included the music and work of Fiddlin' Earl White.    Well-respected as both an educator and a storyteller, White, who was born in Newark, New Jersey, started his music career dancing as a co-founder of the Green Grass Cloggers while still in college studying psychology.   He’s happy to share the story. “I hooked up with some people at East Carolina University who were