Engine 145 - A Roots Music Publication

I go to a lot of shows – between 75-100 a year – but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band make playing music look as effortless as The Time Jumpers did Thursday night at their first performance in Washington, DC (a town that Vince Gill praised for its vibrant country and bluegrass history, [...]

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In these days of loops and ProTools, where pitch correction and rhythmic smoothing define the process of “making music,” the notion of old school recording is an awkward proposition. Antiquated or authentic? Emblematic of talent or rigidly clinging to what was from fear of the future? Leave it to honey-blonde Ashley Monroe, an East Tennessee [...]

Continue reading "“Mommy, Where Do Records Come From?” Ashley Monroe Previews Like a Rose"

The tight-knit Washington, DC bluegrass scene is something of a family, complete with its old salts, drunk uncles, and upstart young’uns, and radio station WAMU’s Bluegrass Country is the table around which everybody gathers. In keeping with that spirit, to celebrate 45 years of broadcasting, Bluegrass Country invited two of the genre’s best family acts [...]

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The Kennedy Center is a rather opulent venue for a folk music concert, even if the concert is celebrating one of the 20th century’s most important singer-songwriters. But the two dozen musicians that took the stage Sunday night filled the large concert hall with a joyful noise that surely rattled the chandeliers. Woody Guthrie’s “100th [...]

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It’s fitting that The SteelDrivers, with all their songs of murder and mayhem, would perform at a venue named after Alexander Hamilton, who infamously ended up on the wrong side of a bullet. The ‘Drivers’ Sunday night show at The Hamilton, a new roots music venue in DC, was two fantastic hours of bluegrass punctuated [...]

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For a few hours, a concert hall was temporarily transformed into a church, thanks to singer-songwriters Ruthie Foster and Paul Thorn, who brought their “Soul Salvation Tour” to the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia last Wednesday. Thorn won the audience over in the first seconds of his 45 minute set as he said, in a raspy [...]

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Those running short on seasonal cheer in the DC metro area last night would have felt at home at the Birchmere, where Americana husband and wife duo Over the Rhine (Linford Detweiler on piano and guitar and guitarist/lead singer Karin Bergquist, joined by a drummer and a lap steel/harmonica player) played as part of their [...]

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If you’re a fan of live music, chances are that you’ve got a list of regrets – acts that you never got to see in concert, and now it’s too late. I’ve got more than a few names on that list, chief of which was Foster and Lloyd. Their debut album was the first cassette [...]

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If we’re lucky, we’ll be as hale and hearty at age 88 as Doc Watson is. Joined by longtime partners bassist T. Michael Coleman and David Holt on guitar and banjo, Watson captivated a worshipful, near-capacity Birchmere crowd for two hours on Sunday night with only a 15 minute intermission. His voice was still strong [...]

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Merle Haggard is at an age when most of his contemporaries are enjoying retirement. At 74, the grizzled singer may have lost some hair, but he hasn’t lost his country chops, as he proved Monday night in front of a worshipful crowd that included everyone from little girls in tutus and cowboy boots to guys [...]

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