From North Carolina to Mississippi… Clean into Canada, back through Ohio and finishing up back in North Carolina…. In ONE hour!
WHEW! That made us tired and we didn’t even get out of our chairs! We start the show off this week with a fairly new band from Madison, North Carolina called Blues Creek. This band was formed in 2005 and have a great project out on the market. If you’re in the vicinity of Madison, North Carolina and Blues Creek is playing, go by and have a listen and pick up their self titled CD! Don’t forget to mention that you heard them on LocalGrass Radio! In the meantime, head over to Facebook and look them up!
After enjoying a couple of tunes by Blues Creek, we’re heading into the deep south to hear some original music by a group of young guys from the great state of Mississippi. They are known as Breaking Grass. In the bio information we have here at the LocalGrass World Headquarters, we see that Breaking Grass won the 2011 Mississippi State Bluegrass Band Championship! We can certainly understand why. Their musicianship along with Cody Farrar’s original lyrics sound like the stuff that would come from seasoned entertainers, NOT folks this young! Check out their website at breakingrass.com!
Our next stop is north of the border, and we’re not talking about Gate City, Virginia! The Ducharme Family band have a sound that’s all their own. According to their website, they are “based in a little town called River Valley in Northern Ontario, a father Mike and his two sons form the band. Marc Rivet from Coniston Ontario adds the finishing touches with his fine banjo playing.” They have been nominated several times at the Central Canadian Bluegrass Music Awards and have a great CD out called, “Down On The River”. Check them out at their website and if you do see them in person, tell them Linda & Kenneth was playing the fire outta that CD!
Next stop, Ohio, USA! The Efaw family should be a name that our regular listeners are familiar with by now. Their great traditional band, The Bluegrass Mountaineers, stay true to the sounds made famous by Carter & Ralph Stanley in the mountains of Virginia. We’ve played the Mountaineers on the show a couple of times before, and will continue to do so as long as they’re cranking out this great traditional bluegrass, and with the fourth generation coming along, it looks like we’ll have plenty of material for future shows! Visit the Bluegrass Mountaineers at their website! If you love great traditional tunes performed the way they were meant to be, you’re gonna love them!
Our final stop on this bluegrass road trip brings us back to the state where we started, North Carolina. That is the home of Al Batten and the Bluegrass Reunion. Al was a guest on our show about a year ago. Al wasn’t just a guest, he was a GREAT guest! He’s been traveling around the world with his band for a lot of years and has the stories to prove it! Made up of some of the finest traditional bluegrass musicians central N.C. has to offer, Al Batten and the Bluegrass Reunion can’t be beat! To end the show we feature a snippet of one of those stories Al shared with us and a song that has been most popular to thousands of listeners down in North Carolina. Visit Al Batten and his band at the website, bluegrassreunion.com. You’ll be glad you did!
Can you believe we’ve packed all that into one show? It’s a show worth tuning in to hear, that’s for sure! Head over and visit us on our own little home on the ‘lectric interweb too! We’d love it if you’d click some of our links and follow us on Twitter and come over to Facebook and join us there! You can find all the links to that and more at localgrass.com. Tune us in each and every Sunday night on 90.7 FM WEHC where we’re taking local bluegrass off the porch and sending it around the world!
