Bluegrass Jam Along

My guest this week is fiddler, string arranger, composer and session musician Matt Combs. After decades working in the service of other people's music, including a stint in the Opry house band, Matt has just put out his first solo record 'Fifty Years of Clown School.' We chat about why now felt like the time to put out his own record, as well as the reasons why he shelved a previous...

My guest this week is singer-songwriter Kristy Cox and we're chatting about her brand new album 'Winds of Change', due out on October 9th. Kristy explains why this record is her rawest and most personal yet and how, through her long term collaboration with producer Jerry Salley, plus her co-writers on the album, she created a journey that took heartbreak and turned it into hope.  We...

My guest this week is Bertolf Lentink, better know as simply Bertolf. Bertolf grew up listening to bluegrass at home in the Netherlands with his parents and learned to play guitar with his father. Then he discovered other bands, including the Beatles and Radiohead, and began writing songs of his own. After several albums in a pop/rock, singer-songwriter vein, he was drawn back to his initial love...

My guest this week is Julian Lage and we're talking about his extraordinary solo guitar album 'World's Fair'. Julian will be known to many of you as a jazz player but is also widely known in the bluegrass and string band world through his wonderful duet records with Chris Eldridge of Punch Brothers and Mighty Poplar. In fact, Julian's first recording was an acoustic duet w...

Welcome to this month’s Bluegrass Briefing, a monthly 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. Pod news Sean Sullivan interview Lindsay Lou’s Bluegrass Women interview Julian Lage Australian tour dates News and announcements - church street news  Bela Fleck pre-order Releases (The Grass is New) Billy Strin...

My guest this week is 5 time Grammy award winning engineer, mixer and producer Sean Sullivan. Sean has worked with dozens of artists, including Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, The Steeldrivers, The Del McCoury Band, Michael Cleveland, Andrew Marlin, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway and Mighty Poplar. We chat about his route into recording and how he only came to love string band music when he s...

My guest this week is Lindsay Lou. I chatted with Lindsay a while back, about her record  Queen of Time . This time we're talking about her brand new record  Bluegrass Women. Lindsay reveals how the project came about and why she wanted to make a record celebrating the contributions of women to bluegrass. We talk about the musicians on the record - including Sarah Jarosz, Sierra Hull, Molly T...

Welcome to this month’s Bluegrass Briefing, a monthly 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  Bluegrass Album Band reissue Blue Waters Bluegrass Dawg at 80 videos Releases (The Grass is New) Lindsay Lou - Bluegrass Women Mike Marshall Sings Bluegrass Ken and Br...

To celebrate Punch Brothers' new record, The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers , I'm reposting a fascinating conversation I had with Brittany Haas after she joined the band. This is the first Punch album with Brittany in the line-up so I thought it would be fun to listen back and hear how she joined the band and what her first shows were like. I'd interviewed Gabe Witcher a few da...

My guest this week is Jerry Douglas and we're celebrating the reissue of Boone Creek's first album. Boone Creek has a fascinating story behind it, which we covered in last week's interview with Scott Billington , who put together the reissue for Craft Recordings. In this episode I chat with Jerry about the place Boone Creek had in his career, his memories of the original sessions an...

My guest this week is Scott Billington. Scott is a Grammy winning record producer, an author, a record company exec and a musician. But what we're chatting about in this episode is a fascinating story about a pivotal string band album and it's journey to being reissued with extra tracks that went missing for decades. The record in question is Boone Creek's debut album  Boone Creek ,...

Welcome to the Bluegrass Briefing for July 2026, your monthly look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass and beyond. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. News and Announcements (Church Street News) McCoury & Douglas Family Pickin Party Béla Fleck's My Bluegrass Heart tour Releases (The Grass is New) Natalie & Brittany Haas - North Node NoaBass - Late Bloomer V...

This week's Bitesize episode comes from a fascinating conversation I had with Tristan Scroggins in 2021. In this section Tristan reflects on what it means to come to bluegrass as an 'outsider' and how culture and connection aren't just about geographical borders. Growing up in New Mexico, despite learning traditional bluegrass from his father, Tristan felt a disconnect from the...

My guest this week is Missy Raines and we're talking about one of her all time favourite records - The Seldom Scene's Act Two We talk about how Missy grew up listening to The Country Gentlemen and The Seldom Scene, thanks to her parents' love of bluegrass, and how the band played a formative role in her early musical life, in particular how Tom Gray influenced her to become a bass p...

Welcome to the June 2026 Bluegrass Briefing, a monthly 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) Craft Recordings Boone Creek reissue (preorder) CD LP Download Gabe Witcher's Gig Ledger Pro app 51st Annual Father's Day Bluegrass Festival Marcel Ardans&ap...

My guests on the podcast this week have an astonishing 24 Grammy awards between them and they represent two musical world I love - the first is bluegrass and string band music and the second is opera. Renée Fleming and Béla Fleck join me to chat about their wonderful new collaboration The Fiddle and the Drum , a project which explores Renée's long-held love of American folk and Appalachian mu...

My guest this week is Tim O'Brien and he joins me to chat about 'The Tim O'Brien Songbook', a handpicked selection of 40 of his songs, complete with notation, chords, Nashville number charts and thoughts from Tim on singing and songwriting. We talk about Tim's journey from being an instrumentalist, to a singer, then a songwriter, and some of the key points along the way, a...

My guest this week is Sierra Hull and we're chatting about her instrumental project The Movements. We talk about how the piece came about, as the result of a FreshGrass Concerto commission, how she approached writing the piece, with and for her current band (Avery Merritt, Erik Coveney, Mark Raudabaugh, and Shaun Richardson), and the challenges presented by releasing a project like this.  We...

My guest this week is John Reischman and we're talking about his fantastic record The Salish Sea , recorded with his band The Jaybirds. We chat about the band's long history together and the journey behind this record, including the Freshgrass Concerto Commission that led to the title track. John also shares his memories of first meeting Tony Rice and how he came to play with The Tony Ri...

My guest on the podcast this week is fiddle player Andy Leftwich and we're chatting about his new album  Aced . Andy talks about his love for instrumental music, including how hearing Mark O'Connor's  The New Nashville Cats as a child inspired him. He also talks about contest fiddling and his 15 year stint with Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, alongside Cody Kilby, who features on...

Welcome to this month’s Bluegrass Briefing, a monthly 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 Recent interview episodes Apple Spotify News and Announcements (Church Street News) Todd Phillips fundraiser North Carolina Guitar Celebration Craft Recordings Tony Rice reissue Releases (The Grass i...

In early April I got the chance to go and hang out at SoreFingers, the UK bluegrass and old time camp, for a night. I'd recently interviewed John Wirtz about Sore Fingers' 30 year history for the podcast (link below) and he invited me along to meet the staff and tutors, hang out and watch some music. While I was there I got to interview Michael Daves and Tony Trischka (links to their epi...

Tony Trischka returns to Bluegrass Jam Along to talk about his new record Earl Jam 2, the follow up to the first volume of a fascinating project that began when Tony was sent a thumb drive of recordings of Earl Scruggs and John Hartford jamming together at home. Volume 2 also has a great line up of special guests, including Billy Strings, Bruce Molsky, Molly Tuttle, Del McCoury, Sierra Ferrell and...

My guest this week is Michael Daves and we're chatting about the superb new record he has out with Jacob Jolliff, We Like Jim & Jesse! The record, released on Michael's own label Wild Geranium Records , celebrates the music of first generation bluegrass legends, brothers Jim and Jesse McReynolds. Michael talks about meeting Jesse in 2019 - he was 90 or 91 at the time and still writin...

My guest on this episode is Bryan Sutton. We're talking about Bryan's new project  From Roots to Branches , the follow up to his 2006 album Not Too Far From the Tree , which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The new album features a series of duets with musicians from the wold of bluegrass and beyond, plus a couple of unreleased tunes he recorded with Doc Watson and Tony Rice. W...