For two decades now, Greensky Bluegrass have been building an empire, brick by brick. They are widely known for their dazzling live performances and relentless touring schedule, but that is only the tip of the complex tale of the five musicians that make up Greensky Bluegrass: Anders Beck (dobro), Michael Arlen Bont (banjo), Dave Bruzza (guitar), Mike Devol (upright bass), and Paul Hoffman (mandolin). The five are connected through a deep bond, just as they are seasoned road warriors, they’re a band of brothers who have seen each other through decades of ups and downs, personal and collective highlights, and the moments when life turns it all upside down. These are real people having real experiences. As with traditional bluegrass, they write about their own contemporary day-to-day happenings, emotions, and experiences in the modern world.
The band’s underground die-hard fans pack out venues across the country. They travel in droves and sell out multiple-night show runs at iconic venues like Red Rocks and The Ryman.
“As songwriters and musicians, we have a need for people to be on board, we’re not just regurgitating the same shit,” explains Bruzza.
Hoffman adds, “we aren’t a band all for money. We did it for romantic reasons such as love, catharsis, and because it mattered to us and the listeners. It would be easy to make decisions based on our needs to eat or the desires of others, but that’s not doing it for love. We love what we do, and we’re grateful for the love we receive in return from the people listening.”
Bruzza continues, “I hope they know we’re doing this for us and them.”
Yonder Mountain String Band, a driving force in roots music for nearly three decades and a key player in the progressive jamgrass movement, kicks off a new chapter with Nowhere Next. Featuring original songs inspired by lived experiences, people, and places that have shaped them, the album is a mix of bluegrass, rock, and country with soulful, funky grooves. Their 11th studio album follows the Grammy-nominated Get Yourself Outside (2022), adding depth and momentum to Yonder’s rich musical legacy.
Nowhere Next showcases the musical talents and collaborative writing efforts of founding members Adam Aijala (guitar, vocals), Dave Johnston (banjo, vocals), and Ben Kaufmann (bass, vocals), alongside multi-instrumentalist Nick Piccininni (mandolin, banjo, fiddle, vocals), a five-year veteran whose contributions as a singer and instrumentalist shine throughout the record. Together, they co-wrote nine of the eleven tracks, artfully blending their unique perspectives and vocal ranges to give each song its own distinct character. Coleman Smith (fiddle) makes his studio debut, adding a vibrant layer that complements the band’s overall dynamic. Grammy-winning Dobro legend Jerry Douglas brings his signature style to three standout tracks: “Here I Go,” “Wasting Time,” and “Didn’t Go Wrong.”
Balancing nostalgia and innovation, Nowhere Next captures the essence of Yonder’s journey, transitioning from reflective storytelling to adventurous, genre-defying excursions. Tracks like “Leave the Midwest,” “Cruisin’,” and “The Truth Fits” highlight their gift for narrative, while “Nowhere Next,” “Here I Go,” and “Wasting Time” reveal their capacity for the unexpected. “Come See Me,” “Second Hand Smoke,” and “Outlaw” nod to tradition with a touch of country that complements the band’s signature style. The album also pays homage to Yonder’s storied past, breathing new life into two classics from the Yonder catalog, “River” and “Didn’t Go Wrong,” reaching back over two decades.
Produced by Yonder Mountain String Band, Nowhere Next brings together the unique voices and visions of each member, where their contributions resonate with a shared openness. This collective synergy forges a powerful bond within the band, making each track feel both grounded and alive with their connection. Edgy, heartfelt, and full of surprises, Nowhere Next stands out as one of Yonder’s most compelling albums yet, inviting listeners to experience the band at their most vibrant and unrestrained.
Over the last four decades, Bela Fleck has made a point of boldly going where no banjo player has gone before, a musical journey that has earned him 19 Grammys in nine different fields, including Country, Pop, Jazz, Instrumental, Classical and World Music. But his roots are in bluegrass, and that’s where he returns with his band of all-star players, My Bluegrass Heart.
Taking its namesake from Fleck’s 2021 Grammy award-winning album, My Bluegrass Heart, the album was the third chapter of a trilogy which began with the 1988 album, Drive, and continued in 1991 with The Bluegrass Sessions. Fleck’s band spotlights a multi-generational gamut of the best of bluegrass players, all sporting a myriad of Grammy nominations, as well as gigantic piles of IBMA awards for their instruments: fiddler Michael Cleveland, mandolinist Dominick Leslie, Jeff Partin on dobro, bassist/multi-instrumentalist Mark Schatz, and Jake Stargel on guitar.
For over two decades, Railroad Earth has captivated audiences with gleefully unpredictable live shows and eloquent and elevated studio output. The group introduced its signature sound on 2001’s The Black Bear Sessions. Between selling out hallowed venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, they’ve been responsible for launching signature festivals Hangtown Music Festival in Placerville, CA and Hillberry: The Harvest Moon Festival in Eureka Springs, AR. Sought after by legends, the John Denver Estate tapped them to put lyrics penned by the late John Denver to music on the 2019 vinyl LP, Railroad Earth: The John Denver Letters. Beyond tallying tens of millions of streams, the collective have earned widespread critical acclaim from David Fricke of Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Glide Magazine, and NPR who assured, “Well-versed in rambling around, as you might expect from a band named after a Jack Kerouac poem, the New Jersey-built jam-grass engine Railroad Earth has let no moss grow under its rustic wheels.”
To celebrate 20 years since their inception, the ground-breaking, Grammy Award-winning ensemble The Infamous Stringdusters – whose tone and swagger meld acoustic majesty with the energy of a full-blown rock show – mark this milestone with the release of 20/20.
Twenty brand new songs, born from endless miles in pursuit of a dream. Formed in Nashville in the early 2000s while performing as side-men with stalwarts of the bluegrass community, the band members soaked up every influence like musical sponges. Their friendships, paired with a shared drive to create their own music and master their own destiny, inevitably led to the birth of The Infamous Stringdusters.
Alongside Chris Pandolfi (banjo), Travis Book (double bass), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), Andy Hall (dobro), and Andy Falco (guitar), the group continues to fearlessly blur the boundaries between bluegrass, Americana, country, and indie-folk.
At its core, 20/20 represents a defining chapter for the Stringdusters, who embody sonic exploration and boundless curiosity while holding fast to musical tradition—whether under the bright stage lights or deep within the studio.
“We’ve always been very intentional in how we wanted our show to sound and to look,” according to bassist Travis Book “And, 20 years later, we’re still distilling the best elements of what we all bring to the band.”
Alongside Pandolfi and Book, Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), Andy Hall (dobro), Andy Falco (guitar) purposely and fearlessly blur the boundaries between bluegrass, Americana, country, and indie-folk.
“Bluegrass music brought us together in the first place,” says Jeremy Garrett. “And one of the big things that propels us forward is that everyone keeps pushing so hard – it keeps me incredibly motivated.”
“The creativity and discovery is never-ending,” dobroist Andy Hall adds. “If you keep the art, the music, your instrument and playing in focus, it’s infinitely-deep.”
The idea for the Dusters coalesced in Nashville in the early 2000s when the members were performing as side-men with stalwarts of the bluegrass community. Their friendships and desire to create their own music and master their own destiny inevitably led to the formation of The Infamous Stringdusters.
Even then, they sought to ignite something fresh within the “high lonesome sounds” pioneered by the “Father of Bluegrass,” Bill Monroe. And just like today, the early intent was to present something new and different.
“Bluegrass can sometimes be a little confusing,” Pandolfi says. “Because what’s coming out of the instruments has the energy of rock-n-roll, but guys are just standing there [onstage] in suits. When we came to [bluegrass], we loved the music, but the vibe wasn’t representative of who we were.”
The Dusters envisioned a crossroads where bluegrass instrumentation and vocal harmony met frenzied stage energy and awe-inspiring production. “It took a few years and some experience to let all of those things come together,” Pandolfi says. “We started to tease these things out of the music, but also out of the show, the production, and our personality.”
Each member remains a musical sponge, constantly bringing new influences back into the fold. All are involved in an array of solo projects outside of the band. Those sounds and experiences merge to form the Dusters’ signature sound with 20/20 offering the purest distillation of that experimentation and precision.
“When those individual efforts come back together in the band, it creates a really powerful synergy,” Hall says. “Not only has the band evolved, but individually, I see every band member fully dedicated to their musical endeavors. All of the creative elements have gotten deeper.”
“Life moves on, like our song says,” Andy Falco reminds us, “But we’re always taking what we’ve learned and what we’re experiencing and we put that into the music and the shows. Before we go onstage I like to tell the band ‘remember the joy,’ and we are all still incredibly grateful for the opportunity to make this music with each other.”
Few bands stick around for thirty years. Even fewer bands leave a legacy during that time that marks them as a truly special, once-in-lifetime type band. And no band has done all that and had as much fun as Leftover Salmon.
Since their earliest days as a forward-thinking, progressive bluegrass band who had the guts to add drums to the mix and who was unafraid to stir in any number of highly combustible styles into their ever-evolving sound, to their role as a pioneer of the modern jamband scene, to their current status as elder-statesmen of the scene who cast a huge influential shadow over every festival they play, Leftover Salmon has been a crucial link in keeping alive the traditional music of the past while at the same time pushing that sound forward with their own weirdly, unique style.
The band now features a lineup that has been together longer than any other in Salmon history and is one of the strongest the legendary band has ever assembled. Built around the core of founding members Drew Emmitt and Vince Herman, the band is now powered by banjo-wiz Andy Thorn and driven by the steady rhythm section of bassist Greg Garrison, drummer Alwyn Robinson, and dobro player & keyboardist Jay Starling.
The current lineup is continuing the long, storied history of Salmon which found them first emerging from the progressive bluegrass world and coming of age as one of the original jam bands, before rising to become architects of what has become known as Jamgrass and helping to create a landscape where bands schooled in the traditional rules of bluegrass can break free of those bonds through nontraditional instrumentation and an innate ability to push songs in new psychedelic directions live.
Salmon is a band who for more than thirty years has never stood still; they are constantly changing, evolving, and inspiring. If someone wanted to understand what Americana music is they could do no better than to go to a Leftover Salmon show, where they effortlessly glide from a bluegrass number born on the front porch, to the down-and-dirty Cajun swamps with a stop on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, to the hallowed halls of the Ryman in Nashville, before firing one up in the mountains of Colorado.
Sierra Hull is a seven-time IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year and six-time Grammy nominee, one of bluegrass and Americana’s most dynamic voices. Her latest album, A Tip Toe High Wire, her first independent release, highlights her songwriting and instrumental mastery, featuring Bela Fleck, Tim O’Brien, and Aoife O’Donovan. The album is nominated for four GRAMMY Awards, balancing tradition with innovation. Hull has shared stages with Alison Krauss, Eric Clapton, Sturgill Simpson, Slash, and Robert Randolph, and performed on NPR’s Tiny Desk and The Kelly Clarkson Show. She is the first female artist with a Gibson signature mandolin and a Tennessee Governor’s Distinguished Arts Award recipient.
Magoo is a progressive bluegrass quartet from Denver, Colorado, redefining the boundaries of modern bluegrass with fearless creativity and world-class musicianship. Known for their dynamic live performances, the band delivers a powerful blend of intricate arrangements, tight three-part harmonies, and extended improvisation that bring new life to the genre.
Their debut album What a Life arrives in February 2026, capturing the group’s adventurous spirit and balance between heartfelt songwriting and soaring instrumental work. The record honors the roots of bluegrass while boldly exploring its modern evolution, featuring a guest appearance from bluegrass legend Sam Bush on fiddle and harmony vocals and mastering by two-time GRAMMY Award winner David Glasser at Airshow Mastering.
Each member of Magoo brings a distinctive voice and musical strength to the project. Dobroist Dylan Flynn, winner of the 2024 RockyGrass Dobro Competition, adds soulful depth and melodic warmth. Guitarist Erik Hill, runner-up in the RockyGrass Flatpicking Contest, drives the band’s rhythmic pulse with power and precision. Mandolinist Courtlyn Bills injects fiery solos and inventive arrangements, while bassist Denton Turner grounds the sound with groove, timing, and subtle dynamics. Together, they form a sound that is rich, cohesive, and unmistakably their own.
Magoo’s recent achievements include first place at UllrGrass Band Competition and Clash of the Strings, second at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival Band Competition, and a sold-out headlining show at Globe Hall in Denver. Their festival appearances at WinterWonderGrass, Grand Lake Folk Festival, RapidGrass, and Huck Finn Jubilee have solidified their reputation as one of the most exciting new acts in the progressive bluegrass scene.
With What a Life on the horizon, Magoo stands poised for a breakout year, bridging the heart of traditional bluegrass with the fearless innovation of a new generation.
Andy Falco and Travis Book are both members of the Grammy award winning bluegrass band The Infamous Stringdusters. Inspired by their love of the music of Jerry Garcia, the duo branches off on their own for occasional tours to celebrate Garcia’s timeless songs.
“The project actually originated back stage at ‘Dusters shows where Travis and I would typically warm up with some fun Jerry songs” Falco explains. “At some point we just thought it would be fun to do it in public.”
They draw from Garcia’s solo material, his Grateful Dead catalogue as well as the Traditional songs Jerry loved to play.
“Performing this music as a duo allows us to explore the songs and jam in a way that’s unique to playing as a Duo” Says Book. “We typically hear these songs in larger ensembles, but the songs done with just bass and guitar somehow make the music very interactive with the audience. It’s really a testament to the quality of the songwriting, and we like to put a spotlight on that aspect of Jerry.”
As an elite musician and a mentor, Jerry Douglas continually redefines his role in a career of recording and live performance spanning more than fifty years. A 2024 inductee into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Douglas is widely admired as a resophonic guitarist, solo artist, bandleader, producer, composer, arranger, collaborator, and curator. Few artists have made as deep an impact on modern music as Jerry Douglas.
Growing up in Warren, Ohio, and recording with bluegrass group The Country Gentlemen while still a teenager, Douglas took early inspiration from his guitarist father, John, and his bluegrass band, The West Virginia Travelers. Early in his career, Douglas toured and recorded with J.D. Crowe & The New South, Boone Creek, The Whites, The Dreadful Snakes, The Bluegrass Album Band, and Strength in Numbers. He is a founding member of The Telluride House Band, which got its start at the famed Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1987. A member of Alison Krauss & Union Station since 1998, Douglas has also toured with James Taylor, Lyle Lovett, Elvis Costello, and Paul Simon, and with his own bands, The Jerry Douglas Band and The Earls of Leicester.
Douglas presented and performed at the first International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awards show in 1990. He composed the show’s theme, “Shoulder to Shoulder,” with Mark Schatz. In addition, Douglas received the 1994 GRAMMY Award for Best Bluegrass Album for The Great Dobro Sessions, a multi-artist collection he recorded and produced. By 1998, he had released eight solo albums for Rounder Records, MCA Master Series, and Sugar Hill Records.
Throughout his wide-ranging career, Douglas has accrued dozens of IBMA trophies, as well as multiple awards from the Country Music Association (a three-time Musician of the Year), the Academy of Country Music (a ten-time recipient in the Specialty Instrument category), and the Americana Music Association (Lifetime Achievement Award). He has also received a multitude of industry awards as a member of Alison Krauss & Union Station, and for his contributions to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? film and soundtrack (2000).
Douglas serves as co-musical director of The Transatlantic Sessions, an international troupe of musicians who perform roots music from North America, England, Ireland, and Scotland on the namesake BBC series and on tour. In 2014, Douglas formed the band The Earls of Leicester to honor pioneering bluegrass duo Flatt & Scruggs, reintroducing their historic catalog to a modern audience. As a studio musician, he has played on more than two thousand albums and tracks. He has served on the boards of the National Council for Traditional Arts, NARAS, and IBMA. In 2020, contributions to the IBMA Trust Fund were generated via donations during his Flux Friday livestream program. He also raised funds for and awareness of the Earl Scruggs Center (Shelby, North Carolina) with an all-star concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in 2024.
Douglas has won a career total of sixteen Grammy Awards, most recently as a producer of two albums for Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. He has also produced albums for Alison Krauss, The Del McCoury Band, The Gibson Brothers, John Hiatt, Steep Canyon Rangers, The Whites, Jesse Winchester, and Maura O’Connell. He gives longtime listeners and new fans alike an overview of his remarkable career on his newest album, The Set.
As a bluegrass ambassador, Douglas has twice traveled the world on U.S. State Department tours. In 2004, he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is without hyperbole that The New York Times deemed Douglas “Dobro’s matchless contemporary master.”
There was only one prize-winning teenager carrying stones big enough to say thanks, but no thanks to Roy Acuff. Only one son of Kentucky finding a light of inspiration from Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys and catching a fire from Bob Marley and The Wailers. Only one progressive hippie allying with like-minded conspirators, rolling out the New Grass revolution, and then leaving the genre’s torch-bearing band behind as it reached its commercial peak.
There is only one consensus pick of peers and predecessors, of the traditionalists, the rebels, and the next gen devotees. Music’s ultimate inside outsider. Or is it outside insider? There is only one Sam Bush.
On a Bowling Green, Kentucky cattle farm in the post-war 1950s, Bush grew up an only son, and with four sisters. His love of music came immediately, encouraged by his parents’ record collection and, particularly, by his father Charlie, a fiddler, who organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a staff fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry, but a clear day’s signal from Nashville brought to Bush’s television screen a tow-headed boy named Ricky Skaggs playing mandolin with Flatt and Scruggs, and an epiphany for Bush. At 11, he purchased his first mandolin.
As a teen fiddler Bush was a three-time national champion in the junior division of the National Oldtime Fiddler’s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor Richard’s Almanac, as a high school senior and in the spring of 1970 attended the Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bluegrass.
Acuff offered him a spot in his band. Bush politely turned down the country titan. It was not the music he wanted to play. He admired the grace of Flatt & Scruggs, loved Bill Monroe—even saw him perform at the Ryman—but he’d discovered electrified alternatives to tradition in the Osborne Brothers and manifest destiny in The Dillards.
See the photo of a fresh-faced Sam Bush in his shiny blue high school graduation gown, circa 1970. Tufts of blonde hair breaking free of the borders of his squared cap, Bush is smiling, flanked by his proud parents. The next day he was gone, bound for Los Angeles. He got as far as his nerve would take him—Las Vegas—then doubled back to Bowling Green.
“I started working at the Holiday Inn as a busboy,” Bush recalls. “Ebo Walker and Lonnie Peerce came in one night asking if I wanted to come to Louisville and play five nights a week with the Bluegrass Alliance. That was a big, ol’ ‘Hell yes, let’s go.'”
Bush played guitar in the group, then began playing after recruiting guitarist Tony Rice to the fold. Following a fallout with Peerce in 1971, Bush and his Alliance mates—Walker, Courtney Johnson, and Curtis Burch—formed the New Grass Revival, issuing the band’s debut, New Grass Revival. Walker left soon after, replaced temporarily by Butch Robins, with the quartet solidifying around the arrival of bassist John Cowan.
“There were already people that had deviated from Bill Monroe’s style of bluegrass,” Bush explains. “If anything, we were reviving a newgrass style that had already been started. Our kind of music tended to come from the idea of long jams and rock-&-roll songs.”
Shunned by some traditionalists, New Grass Revival played bluegrass fests slotted in late-night sets for the “long-hairs and hippies.” Quickly becoming a favorite of rock audiences, they garnered the attention of Leon Russell, one of the era’s most popular artists. Russell hired New Grass as his supporting act on a massive tour in 1973 that put the band nightly in front of tens of thousands.
At tour’s end, it was back to headlining six nights a week at an Indiana pizza joint. But they were resilient, grinding it out on the road. And in 1975 the Revival first played Telluride, Colorado, forming a connection with the region and its fans that has prospered for 45 years.
Bush was the newgrass commando, incorporating a variety of genres into the repertoire. He discovered a sibling similarity with the reggae rhythms of Marley and The Wailers and, accordingly, developed an ear-turning original style of mandolin playing. The group issued five albums in their first seven years and in 1979 became Russell’s backing band. By 1981, Johnson and Burch left the group, replaced by banjoist Bela Fleck and guitarist Pat Flynn.
A three-record contract with Capitol Records and a conscious turn to the country market took the Revival to new commercial heights. Bush survived a life-threatening bout with cancer and returned to the group that had become more popular than ever. They released chart-climbing singles, made videos, earned Grammy nominations, and, at their zenith, called it quits.
“We were on the verge of getting bigger,” recalls Bush. “Or maybe we’d gone as far as we could. I’d spent 18 years in a four-piece partnership. I needed a break. But I appreciated the 18 years we had.”
Bush worked the next five years with Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers, then a stint with Lyle Lovett. He took home three straight IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year awards, 1990–92 (and a fourth in 2007). In 1995 he reunited with Fleck, now a burgeoning superstar, and toured with the Flecktones, reigniting his penchant for improvisation. Then, finally, after a quarter-century of making music with New Grass Revival and collaborating with other bands, Sam Bush went solo.
He’s released seven albums and a live DVD over the past two decades. In 2009, the Americana Music Association awarded Bush the Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist. Punch Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Greensky Bluegrass are just a few present-day bluegrass vanguards among so many musicians he’s influenced. His performances are annual highlights of the festival circuit, with Bush’s joyous perennial appearances at the town’s famed bluegrass fest earning him the title, “King of Telluride.”
“With this band I have now I am free to try anything. Looking back at the last 50 years of playing newgrass, with the elements of jazz improvisation and rock-&-roll, jamming, playing with New Grass Revival, Leon, and Emmylou; it’s a culmination of all of that,” says Bush. “I can unapologetically stand onstage and feel I’m representing those songs well.”
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