Pickers: a catchall thread for modern bluegrass, nu-old-time music, rootsy americana string bands, etc.

Someone posted a pretty big cache of Tony Rice live shows to reddit (including Rice/Blake, Superpickers, J.D. Crowe & New South etc.)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GxOds0DpFDKtiQWFSqteioB1Co8z1-jm

incidentally, what would be the easiest way to make all that stuff playable on my phone without having to click one track at a time (specifically thinking for car listening). Is there a way I can keep them online but in a better streaming format?

Lately I’ve been trying to push a little into the jazzier Tony Rice Unit albums, like Backwaters. It still feels a bridge too far into cable menu channel music for me, but his playing on them is incredible.

Not sure this is the correct thread for this band. They refer to their own sound as "transcendental twang". But I'm super psyched for this forthcoming release:

https://arborlaborunion.bandcamp.com/album/yonder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3c0hrKiPco

There's a new Tommy Emmanuel "Accomplice" album out ("Two") that follows the one he released in 2018. Features duets with a number of talented players including Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, and Yasmin Williams.

https://open.spotify.com/album/17sn081QrEUaQEI3t2oiJb

Here are the videos for the recordings with Billy Strings (doing Doc Watson tunes) & Yasmin Williams, both great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnUG-SgILy8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SSCzfft4Gw

the billy strings record with his dad from last year is so great! i mean, just fantastic. the songwriting is excellent and the arrangements are so tasty and basically catnip for old school bluegrass nerds.

My dude
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teA-If9JxMY

new Nora Brown EP with Stephanie Coleman is good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T67bfkm2Bw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjqeQ5cylFk

Love this Dan Crary (of awful album art "Lady's Fancy" fame) performance

That Nora Brown vid is lovely too. She's great.

Saw a video of her playing John Cohen's banjo, which was also played by Roscoe Holcomb. She also mentioned a banjo her father made. So it sounds like she's got a deep connection to the old time music world? Not sure what the story is, but she sure is great.

Did not see this coming---given his formative-years impressions of Django and Bob Wills, would expect at least some of it to tend toward swingrass (swine grass?), a la xxxpost Roland White:

Bluegrass, Willie Nelson's 151st album, presents 12 classic Willie Nelson compositions--including "On the Road Again," "Yesterday's Wine," "Still is Still Moving to Me," "Good Hearted Woman" and more--freshly interpreted by Willie and his bluegrass ensemble. For the album, Willie picked 12 personal and fan favorite compositions from across his career to perform anew. All songs on Bluegrass were written by Willie except "Good Hearted Woman" which has music and lyrics written by both Willie and Waylon Jennings.

CD Release Date: 9/15/2023
Vinyl Release Date: 9/29/2023

The first ever thread I discovered ILM through was an awful album art thread that featured this classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4NDOo3XtE

Things have come full circle as I’ve now discovered it’s a fucking masterwork of flatpicking guitar.

I didn't know this guy until a few days ago, but pretty incredible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsZ968M5D0Y

Enjoyed this live performance of Alison Brown and Steve Martin's duet from her new album On Banjo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doBcW7Hx9SY

Gotta throw out a mention of my buddy Devon, a fantastic young banjo player. Killer baritone voice too. Great guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZHqcdU_rAs

Everybody needs to listen to Summer Dean

"She's In His Arms But I'm In The Palm Of His Hand"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ_hFtAIw4g

Is her throwback sound better than others who are also singing old school style country? She does it well.

Veranda are a Mom & Pop operation, with just the right helpers (guests x regulars always tight x fluid): Quebec Francophone originals with French airs further lifting bluegrass and old-timey. Results don't usually make me think "Cajun," but Arcadian refreshment out on the front porch, yeah. They've got a bunch here, but so far I'm totally detained by the latest, L​à​-​bas:https://verandamusic.bandcamp.com/album/l-bas
One of their colleagues is banjoist Guy Donis, and given the title of Guy Donis & The Montreal Bluegrass League, I was hoping for more like this, but nope, it's just good strong American-associated tradgrass-folk, with "Deep Ellum Blues" etc. stirring the jar:https://guydonis.bandcamp.com/album/guy-donis-the-montreal-bluegrass-league

More originals with arresting use of trad elements: singer-songwriter-flatpicker Molly Tuttle's aptly titled Crooked Tree, with some twisted plots and relationships flying through grassy tunes played by heavy hitters, also mellower trips like her childhood memories of Daddy taking her to Cali situations involving for instance "dawg music" of Grisman.

Speaking of whom, he is, without showboating, romping all over 2022 reissues of Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard's 1965 debut, Who's That Knocking?---along with

Chubby Wise, arguably the architect of bluegrass fiddling...and Lamar Grier, who played banjo as a member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the 1960s.

I haven't played the earlier reissue of Rounder Records' 1973 Hazel and Alice yet, but bow bad could it be?
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/hazel-alice

And this is real freaking good, from 2018:

set of newly unearthed recordings, Sing Me Back Home: The DC Tapes, 1965-1969, out September 21 on Free Dirt Records. Sourced from Alice's private archive and digitized with help from the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC Chapel Hill, the recordings invite us to witness the creative process of these towering figures—just two voices and a handful of instruments working out arrangements at home. Across 19 tracks the duo sings the classic country of The Carter Family, The Louvin Brothers, and Jimmie Rodgers; contemporary hits of the 1960s penned by Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard; and barn-burning traditional standards that blur the line between old-time and early bluegrass. Sing Me Back Home is a raw, unfiltered listen to Hazel & Alice at the height of their collaborative energy.

My parents have the 1973 Hazel and Alice and of course it's great. Thanks for these links, I didn't know about all these reissues.

As entertainment anyway, don't know that I've taken in any ideas beyond that in his yarns. If so, they went in one eye and out the other.
Although I can't help missing Bradbury and even ER Burroughs, most of the new retro Old Mars is Big Red Fun, as concisely described here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Mars

Welcome! I covet your parents' album. Also: Alice's Hiss Golden Messenger-produced Follow The Music, from 2014, when she was 85---here with a lot of others I haven't heard yet, incl advance tracks from Sun To Sun, which comes out Oct. 20!
https://alicegerrard.bandcamp.com/music

I *have* heard Follow The Music, and dig it. Some more originals w trad elements.

Just dropped. Amazing record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbXwZ_PAp_0
https://open.spotify.com/album/1GhQW4Cs0dcMELeXF20pYE?si=Ir8TrfEiTq2m6M0r8EwxeQ

I think this is my favorite track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd-Z16tga10