Pilgrim Productions Presents: Voices Across America, an archive of gospel music in a variety of genres, submitted for free play and download by church groups and folk and traditional groups across the country and beyond. Style, age, and quality vary greatly, but fans of noncommercial music will enjoy hunting for the gems of blues, Cajun, bluegrass, choral, shapenote, country, vintage, and mountain gospel and more.
posted by Miko on May 24, 2009 - 15 comments

Perhaps the greatest country baritone since George Jones is confined to a wheelchair by muscular dystrophy and has a day job at a nuclear power plant. [more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk on Apr 14, 2009 - 29 comments

"With this blog, I want to use the Folkways Anthology as a roadmap to explore American folk music and maybe other countries traditions along the way. I’ll use texts, images, music and videos gathered from my personal collection and from the net to make this work-in-progress enjoyable and educational the best I can." (via)
posted by 1f2frfbf on Mar 12, 2009 - 17 comments

Music in the Digital Library of Appalachia provides an unprecedented resource for study of repertoire, technique, lore, and the musical interchanges among the region's traditional musicians. Once you know what you like, it's easy to find the music live with Blue Ridge Music Trails. Meet musicians who have grown up with that music, visit settings in which Blue Ridge folk music thrives, see traditional dancing, and in many cases, take part in the festivities. The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, winds through the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Along the trail, the Bluegrass, Old Time, and Traditional Country music is as beautiful and rugged as the landscape itself. [previous 1, 2]
posted by netbros on Mar 8, 2009 - 12 comments

The occasionally updated The Celestial Monochord claims to be the "Journal of the Institute for Astrophysics and the Hillbilly Blues" [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Jan 23, 2009 - 5 comments

Get Down on Your Knees , Crying Holy (Unto the Lord) with Vince Gill, and Working on a Building with Patty Loveless. Some gospel music from Del McCoury.
posted by RussHy on Oct 18, 2008 - 17 comments

Bluegrass Grows in Golden Gate Park. The line-up for the 8th annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival has been announced for the first weekend of October in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, its traditional location since its inception in 2001. [more inside]
posted by Senor Cardgage on Aug 17, 2008 - 22 comments

dawn Landes & the We Sorta Tried Bluegrass Band perform a rather charming version of Peter, Bjorn and John's Young Folks [SLYT]. [more inside]
posted by le morte de bea arthur on Jul 1, 2008 - 15 comments

I tell you what, buddy, that ol' Joe Maphis fellow outta Bakersfield, he was one fast picker. Yup, fast as greased lightning and smooth as gaht-damn silk on that double-neck Mosrite guitar. He and the missus have a little advice for you, too: Don't Make Love In a Buggy. And though Joe was mainly a picker, he did pen one memorable little country ditty which you might've heard in some honky tonk along the line: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music). [note: see hoverovers for link descriptions] [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite on Feb 28, 2008 - 27 comments

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He plays the banjo, but he isn't just some hick. He enjoys Chicks, jamming with friends, wide open spaces and fights.
posted by stavrogin on Jan 18, 2008 - 74 comments

F i d d l e.
posted by Mblue on Jul 28, 2007 - 17 comments

Banjo
posted by Mblue on Jul 24, 2007 - 61 comments

MusicMoose wants "to provide the world with free, useful music lessons, and a community based site to help back it all up." The site contains hundreds of free video music lessons (often containing notation and/or tablature) with a distinct focus on acoustic and bluegrass music, all taught by some pretty badass pickers (including the astonishingly good mandolin shredder Anthony Hannigan). There are also obligatory but very useful forums. Takeaway: the whole thing is free and you don't have to register to watch the lessons.
posted by kosem on Jun 29, 2007 - 15 comments

Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Loud, Loud Music Photgrapher Henry Horenstein's Honky-Tonk: Portraits of Country Music, 1972-1981 captures a sound in transition. This evocative collection of informal, black-and-white portraits of country musicians and fans in bars, backstage, and on the road illustrate a decade when smoky roadhouses and venerated venues began to give way to the more mainstream Countrypolitan or "Nashville" sound. Seminal artists like Mother Maybelle Carter and Bill Monroe mingled backstage with shinier newcomers like Dolly Parton and Anne Murray. But even as the commercial sound was dominating, youngsters mixing with old-timers sparked the first wave of old-time/bluegrass revival, and some of the artists who got started then still carry the torch for a non-Nashville sound today. In this online exhibit you can watch it all unfold.
posted by Miko on Feb 2, 2007 - 30 comments

Folkstreams.net has two goals. One is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The other is to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers in a golden age that began in the 1960s and was made possible by the development first of portable cameras and then capacity for synch sound. Their films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities. The filmmakers were driven more by sheer engagement with the people and their traditions than by commercial hopes. Their films have unusual subjects, odd lengths, and talkers who do not speak "broadcast English." Although they won prizes at film festivals, were used in college classes, and occasionally were shown on PBS, they found few outlets in venues like theaters, video shops or commercial television. But they have permanent value...

folkstreams.net Currently streaming are the films The Land Where the Blues Began , Cajun Country , Jazz Parades: Feet Don't Fail Me Now , Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance: Buck, Flatfoot and Tap , Ray Lum: Mule Trader and Pizza Pizza Daddy-O , among many others.
posted by y2karl on Oct 6, 2006 - 14 comments

Clarence Ashley - The Coo Coo
Skip James - Crow Jane
Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years
Son House - John the Revelator
Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys - Close By
Houston Stackhouse & Joe Willie Wilkins - Cool Drink Of Water
Muddy Waters - Honey Bee
Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys - Lone Star Rag
Mississipi John Hurt - You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley
Maybelle & Sara Carter - Cannonball Blues
Al Green - Simply Beautiful
Enjoy. Note that, too, save for Mississippi John Hurt, there is more by each of the above artists linked on each clip's page.
The first is via FaheyGuitarPlayers, the rest were all in a day's surf. On dial-up, even.
posted by y2karl on Sep 20, 2006 - 73 comments

In 1961, on the Martha White Show, seven year-old mandolin prodigy Ricky Skaggs performs two songs with Flatt & Scruggs. "Ruby" and "Foggy Mountain Special". [both songs direct to youtube]
posted by kosem on Sep 16, 2006 - 14 comments

David Lee Roth singing "Jump" with a bluegrass band on national tv - 6/6/06
posted by tsarfan on Jun 7, 2006 - 74 comments

Made most popular to many Americans as the closing song for the Grand Ole Opry programs, Will The Circle Be Unbroken was written in 1907 by Ada Habershon, an intensely religious young woman and acquaintance of Dwight Moody and Ira David Sankey. The music was "composed" by Charles Gabriel, a popular songwriter and composer of the era who is often solely credited with the song, but while he may have put the notes down on paper, the tune itself already existed as the African-American spiritual Glory Glory / Since I Laid My Burden Down. [lots more inside]
posted by luriete on May 26, 2006 - 18 comments

Bluegrass Talk Radio
posted by liam on Mar 16, 2006 - 12 comments

Going Down the Crooked Road. Explore the sights and sounds of Virginia's Heritage Music Trail.
posted by srboisvert on Feb 21, 2006 - 6 comments

The strange story of Billy Yeager aka Jimmy Story the lost son of Jimi Hendrix aka independent film-maker extraordinaire.
I was wearing wigs and disguising myself as different kinds of people or sons of dead rock stars since 7th grade. I ran away at 13 years old. I lived in a tree house. I lost my virginity to a big fat girl who raped me on a hit of acid when I was 14 while her parents were in the living room watching All in the Family.

He's casting for a new film - albeit in a strange manner [swearing, violence, threats - maybe NSFW].
posted by strawberryviagra on Feb 11, 2006 - 16 comments

Vassar Clements, dead at 77.
posted by cedar on Aug 16, 2005 - 25 comments

Blue Ridge Music Trails. An invaluable resource for fans of old-time country, bluegrass, gospel and folk music in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Includes places and events like the Friday night Flatfoot Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store and the Saturday-night show at the Carter Family Fold .
posted by gottabefunky on Jan 21, 2004 - 9 comments

701 78s. A huge set of "old-time" music recordings from 1924-1946, made available in RealAudio format by honkingduck.com. Not high sound quality, but an invaluable collection for anyone with any interest in early recorded bluegrass, folk, country, blues, etc.
posted by staggernation on Nov 10, 2003 - 23 comments

Is American "Roots Music" here to stay, or will it peter out like the "folk revival" of the 1960's? The recent PBS series, as well as re-issues of classic bluegrass sets, portend well for those of us who love bluegrass. But is it just a flash-in-the-pan? What was the magic behind O Brother, Where Art Thou? Does anyone remember the old masters like Doc Watson, Merle Travis, or Vassar Clements? (Not to mention the Queen of the genre, Mother Maybelle Carter.) Or maybe you prefer the newcomers like Alison Krauss/Union Station.
posted by mrmanley on Apr 9, 2002 - 21 comments

Let’s visit with the father of bluegrass, shall we? (inside)
posted by transient on Mar 27, 2002 - 19 comments