My guest this week is Rebecca Frazier. Rebecca was the first woman ever to appear on the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine and her band Hit & Run are the only band to win all three Rockygrass, Telluride, and SPBGMA Festival Band competitions.

She joins me to chat about her new record Boarding Windows in Paradise. We talk about working with legendary producer and engineer Bill Wolf, recording with Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan and the band Love Canon and the decade gap between this and her last record.

We touch on so many different aspects of combining music with life and how we change (or don't ) over time. We also talk about our shared love of Dolly Parton's record The Grass is Blue and the influence it had on Rebecca's new record.

I loved this conversation and I hope you do too.

For more info check out rebeccafrazier.com, where you'll find links to her tour dates, social channels and YouTube.

If you're listening to this before the record comes out on September 13th 2024, you can pre-save and pre-order the record.

Happy picking.

Matt

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My guest this week is Becky Buller.

Becky is the winner of 10 IBMA awards, including the 2016 awards for Fiddler and Female Vocalist. She's the first woman in the history of IBMA to receive the Fiddle Player of the Year award and the first person ever to win in both vocal and instrumental categories.

She joins me to talk about her fabulous album and song cycle 'Jubilee'.

We talk about the FreshGrass commission that sparked the piece, co-writing with Aoife O'Donovan, taking part in an historic all-female Newport line up (where she sang '9 to 5' with Dolly Parton) and recording 'Jubilee' in the studio...live...in just a day and a half!

We also talk about the themes of anxiety, self-worth and depression that underpin 'Jubilee' and how the enforced shutdown brought on by Covid affected Becky's mental health.

It's an open, honest and warm conversation that touches on so many things I suspect will resonate with a lot of people. It was a joy to get to have it.

Visit beckybuller.com for more info and tour dates and follow Becky on Instagram and Facebook for regular updates.

Happy picking!

Matt

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this week’s Bluegrass Briefing, a weekly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass.

Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode.

Podcast news

• Interview episodes by category

News and Announcements (Church Street News)

• IBMA announcement
• Lessons With Marcel Molly Tuttle book
• Peghead Nation Folk and Bluegrass Songs for Fiddle
• Don’t forget the promo code below for a free month!

Releases (The Grass is New)

• Billy Strings Leadfoot video
• The Grass is (mostly) New 2024 playlist

Scroll on Buddy

• Green Mountain Bluegrass Festival
• Rebecca Frazier High Country Road Trip video

Other bits

• Sign up for emails https://bluegrassjamalong.com/contact/
• The Grass is (mostly) New 2024 playlist
• Full list of interviews
• Peghead Nation
• Use the code ‘jamalong’ for a free month of any course

Happy picking.

Matt

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's episode is a Food For Thought episode. If you're not familiar with them, they're a series of short episodes on a single idea, designed to get you thinking and (hopefully) deepening your understanding of a particular music related area.

This week we've got a simple idea from Dolly Parton - "Find out who you are and do it on purpose."

So many of us think we should decide what kind of musician (or person!) we want to be, then work to become that, but the reality is we've all got something within us that's authentically and uniquely 'us' and we should all be doing our best to lean into it. Not that it's wrong to learn from and be inspired by others, just that only they can be themselves (and we can only be ourselves!)

I hope you find it useful! Back next week with another interview for you.

Happy picking,

Matt

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this week’s Bluegrass Briefing, a weekly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass.

Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode.

News and Announcements (Church Street News)

• IBMA news & info

Releases (The Grass is New)

• The Grass is (mostly) New 2024 playlist

Other bits

• Sign up for emails https://bluegrassjamalong.com/contact/
• The Grass is (mostly) New 2024 playlist
• Full list of interviews
• Peghead Nation
• Use the code ‘jamalong’ for a free month of any course

Happy picking.

Matt

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest this week is Alister Atkin of Atkin Guitars.

I've been following Atkin's progress for a few years now and have been blown away by the quality of guitars they're producing. They combine some cutting edge techniques with a bespoke approach, to bring out the uniqueness of every guitar they make. As Alister puts it: 'We're all about getting the feel and the sound of the instrument, and the aura of a great instrument.'

We talk about some of these processes, including baking wood, freezing guitar bodies and even 3D printing moulds, as well as how Alister got into guitar making in the first place. We also chat about Atkin's White Rice model, a tribute to the Martin D28 owned by Clarence White, then Tony Rice (hence the name!) and the new range of electric guitars they're making.

You can find info and drool over their guitars at https://atkinguitars.com/ and follow the Atkin Guitars Instagram feed for updates.

But what I'd really urge you to do is to find one and play it, which you can do by checking the list of Atkin Guitar dealers around the world.

It was a fascinating chat - I hope you enjoy it.

Happy picking,

Matt

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week we lost Happy Traum, one of the shining lights of acoustic music for over half a century.

It’s hard to fully grasp, in our online world where everything is right there whenever we need it, just what an enormous contribution Happy and the Homespun team made to helping people learn roots and acoustic music.

I was lucky enough to get to chat to Happy a couple of times for the podcast, and he spoke about how strongly he felt that their role was to document, as well as teach. Watching the videos they put out with Tony Rice, Doc Watson, Norman Blake and Bill Monroe (and many more) it’s hard to think of a bigger contribution to documenting an era of music!

To celebrate Happy's extraordinary influence, which will continue for many years through Homespun's legacy, I'm re-posting the chat I had with him for the podcast back in June of 2022. Countless people learned to play an instrument thanks to the books, tapes, videos, CDs, DVDs and downloads Homespun put out, with some of the leading names in roots music, including Tony Rice, Norman Blake, Bill Monroe, John Hartford, Sam Bush and many, many more.

Happy shares the story of how Homespun was born, around a kitchen table, as well as memories of working with some of those iconic musicians, many of whom became friends along the way.

Happy will be dearly missed by those who knew him, as well as by people like me, who didn't, but whose lives were enriched by his work.

Thank you Happy!

Matt

Visit Homespun's website to check out their extraordinary catalogue

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this week’s Bluegrass Briefing, a weekly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass.

Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode.

News and Announcements (Church Street News)

• IBMA award nominees

Releases (The Grass is New)

• David Grisman & the Rounder Album Band - Live at Grass Valley
• The Grass is (mostly) New 2024 playlist

Other bits

• Sign up for emails https://bluegrassjamalong.com/contact/
• The Grass is (mostly) New 2024 playlist
• Full list of interviews
• Peghead Nation
• Use the code ‘jamalong’ for a free month of any course

Happy picking.

Matt

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.