With two feet planted firmly in bluegrass, Claire Lynch’s interests and versatility take her comfortably into country, Americana with a tinge of jazz, swing, and blues in her compositions and her performances. Her career, spanning thirty-five years, includes stints with several bands and working as a house singer/songwriter with Universal-Polygram where her name appears on 160 projects, if I’m counting right. She’s been nominated for a couple of Grammies and was named IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1997. Many of her songs are immediately familiar to bluegrass fans as is her youthful, clear, and expressive voice. Her signature songs include the recent hit “The Day that Lester Died,” “Hills of Alabam’”, and the yearning “Kennesaw Line.” Her version of “Wabash Cannonball” gives the entire band a chance to strut its stuff while always staying true to the great country original made famous by Roy Acuff.

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Quite possibly the most prestigious musical event today, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has hit the big 4-0 and in turn, has outdone itself in booking nothing less than the cream of the crop. The 2009 lineup is incredibly diverse, both stylistically and chronologically, and will take music from jazz, pop, rock, soul, gospel, folk, salsa, blues, R&B, funk, and lots of music rooted in Louisiana, such as Cajun and zydeco. The event is scheduled to take place the weekends of April 24-26 and April 30-May 3 and it's a wonder how they've managed to cram hundreds of artists into a mere seven days. There are so many artists that one wouldn't know where to start unless they have a specific genre in mind. So for now, let's extract some of the rock bands that will be playing.

Although an official schedule has yet to be released, the lineup has been broken up between the two weekends. During the first weekend, Dave Matthews Band will be featured as one of the headliners (sadly, sans the original sax player). Wilco, who strangely drew in a larger crowd than Rage Against the Machine at Lollapalooza, will undoubtedly be received with open arms.  Read more »

The independent event production team, Across-the-Way Productions, just announced exciting additions to the already colorful initial lineup for their celebrated annual music and arts festival, FloydFest. Now in its 8th incarnation, the festival will take place July 23-26, 2009 in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia. Since its inception in 2002, FloydFest organizers have prided themselves in providing a safe and welcoming ground for a global community forum, and musical showcase steeped in Appalachian roots.

Every year I rave about the great lineups set for the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival, the laid-back northern California event honoring the late, great California singer-songwriter. This year is shaping up no differently after the festival's initial lineup announcement this week.

The lineup includes Three Girls and Their Buddy (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller), Richard Thompson, Mavis Staples, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women, Railroad Earth, Riders in the Sky, Chris Smither and more. There will also be a musical tribute to festival hero Utah Phillips including the late songwriter's son Duncan Phillips and friends.

That's a strong roots lineup for most any festival, and especially impressive at a only moderately well known regional folk festival. As I have written before, if you are anywhere near to Menocino County in June, this is one festival not to miss. The 2009 festival takes place at Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville CA on June 26-28. Holiday pricing is in effect now. For more information.

The first set of nine names is out for Strawberry Spring and Fall 2009. There's nothing startlingly new since almost all the bands have played one or more Strawberries before. Nevertheless, the Spring festival especially looks to be shaping up nicely with The Flatlanders, Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives, Dry Branch Fire Squad and Natalie MacMaster on tap.

That's a fine quartet of quality performers representing different sectors of the acoustic music scene. In my view, one of Strawberry's strengths is its programming mix of eclectic roots music styles.

The big attraction named for Fall is Kane, Welch and Kaplan, with western swing ensemble Lost Weekend also tabbed.

Another point to note are featured spots for some local heroes of the Northern California bluegrass scene—Hardly Stictly Bluegrass benefactor Warren Hellman gets a Spring main stage slot with the Wronglers and Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen, son of the Kids on Bluegrass educator and Strawberry insider Frank Solivan, is on the Fall lineup. Santa Cruz favorites Devil Makes Three is also on tap for Spring.  Read more »

Although displayed on the site's main page as running from November 14th-16th, the schedule indicates that a day appears to have been added at the beginning. So the event will supposedly start on Thursday the 13th, featuring additional performances by Perpetual Groove and The Motet. Other headliners include JJ Grey and Mofro, Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, Yonder Mountain String Band, Soulive, The New Mastersounds, Lettuce, The Everyone Orchestra featuring Jon Fishman and Michael Kang, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Dr. Claw (another Ivan Neville outfit), and many more.  Read more »

The headliners named for the 2009 Stagecoach festival will give plenty of draw for the SoCal country audience, with genre heartthrobs Brad Paisley making his festival debut and Kenny Chesney returning after topping the bill in 2007. Reba McEntire should delight that same audience with her throwback country style but updated media personality. Kid Rock could add appeal for a crossover audience with his rap rock style.

Miranda Lambert provides some balance to the hunks in the country chick department, where the initial lineup looks to be otherwise somewhat light. This is an initial lineup only, however.

I'll let the country music bloggers and media analyze the bookings from the Nashville perspective. Festival Preview has followed Stagecoach since its 2007 debut more for its side stages, where an impressive array of alt-county, Americana, bluegrass and western artists have been featured.

The 2009 lineup offers some interesting names in these related categories, which combine to give Stagecoach a well rounded character that differentiates it from other pure Big Country blowouts. A few names that jump out at me are:  Read more »

My last festival trip of 2008 was a dandy! The first festival on the itinerary was the Lake Eden Arts Festival (Leaf) in North Carolina and the second stop was in Florida for the Magnoliafest.

[Part one of contributor Dancin' Dave's Fall Festival Journal covers the run up to the LEAF festival. Read the full post at Dancin' Dave's Festival Camping blog.]  Read more »