January 2020

Billy Strings has been hailed as the future of bluegrass, transcending tradition and genre with his high velocity, flat-picking guitar technique and intense, confessional songwriting. HOME, Strings’ remarkable second studio album, is undoubtedly the Michigan-born, Nashville-based artist’s bravest excursion thus far, completely rewiring bluegrass with elements of punk, country, folk rock, and genuine psychedelic exploration to fashion something altogether his own.

Acclaimed future-funk artist GRiZ joins the lineup for Powabunga, the music and mountain festival, taking place in Vail, CO on April 17-19th, 2020. Previously announced artists include Claptone, Goldfish, Desert Hearts, Purple Disco Machine, Kazy Lambist, Kermesse, Mark Farina, Fleetmac Wood, and more.

Tickets for the three-day event are available now at www.powabungafestival.com.

Today, Bonnaroo reveals the initial lineup for the 19th annual edition of the internationally acclaimed four-day multi-stage camping festival set to take place June 11 – 14 at Great Stage Park, the spectacular 700-acre farm and event space located just 60 miles southeast of Nashville in Manchester, TN.

An impressive assembly of blues music masters, ranging from Blues Hall of Famers to rising stars, will gather in Memphis on Thursday May 7, for the 41st annual Blues Music Awards. Presented by The Blues Foundation, the BMAs honor the past year’s exceptional achievements in blues music recording, performance, and songwriting, as well as supporting the blues’ rich cultural traditions. This celebratory evening, recognized internationally as the blues world’s premier event, not only attracts nearly all the nominees, but also presents them in performance.

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Close your eyes. Visualize a hot, early-August day in Central New Jersey. Two-hundred smiley, red-eyed people, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, are congregating in a field for a music festival. Many of them are wearing tie-dye, bell-bottoms, cowboy hats, and boots. The PA system is projecting the psychedelic-twang of The Byrds, Gram Parsons, and The Grateful Dead into air already filled with a thick, unrelenting, haze of dank smoke. If I asked you to guess what year all of this was taking place, you’d probably guess somewhere in the 60’s or ’70s, rightfully so, but you’d be wrong. The mental image I’ve painted for you is a scene from the band, Mojohand’s 3rd annual DIY summer music festival, “Mojofest III: Cosmic Jamboree” this past summer.

On June 21st, Diana Rein released her new studio album, Queen Of My Castle, the follow-up to her 2016 release Long Road. Queen of My Castle was co-produced by Michael Leasure (drummer Walter Trout Band) and mixed by Lincoln Clapp (who previously mixed Texas Flood by Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of Diana’s biggest influences). The new album is a collection of fifteen songs, one of which is a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan.