It’s hard to exactly pinpoint where the resurgence in popularity of bluegrass music in the last fifteen years has come from. Perhaps it has to do with American’s wanting to reconnect with roots music. It could be that it blends vocal elements of folk music with musical complexity of jazz and classical composition. Perhaps people are just plain sick of what has been coined now as “country”, which appears to have transitioned into electric big-band steel guitar nonsense with even shallower lyrics.

Nestled away in the Manistee National Forest in the northern part of the mitten lie the beautiful grounds that Hoxeyville Music Festival calls home. The ninth installment of the festival proved to be one of the most exciting and eclectic lineups to date.

I am nobody special, I come from a nobody special family in a nobody special kind of town.  However, when I spent Independence Day 2011 at Electric Forest Festival, I felt special.  Suddenly I was from the String Cheese Incident’s family and I lived in the Sherwood Forest!

Ticket sales are underway for the 6^th annual YarmonyGrass festival set to take place on the Colorado River from August 5^th-7^th. The boutique festival aims to cater to the vibrant outdoor sports and music community boasting a prime location for river rafters, single track bikers and fishing enthusiasts during the day and each night plays host to one of the best string-centric outdoor music events in the Rockies.

The Chicagoland weather forecast for Summer Camp 2011 included the infamous 50% chance of rain and sunny skies all weekend long.  What we found were marriages of rain and shine, glamour and gladiator, nature and music all tied together interconnected.    If you buy into numerology, the answer is in the numbers here folks.  Last year we brought attention to the

“Happy Earth Day!  We burned a bunch of gasoline to get all these people into this room, but we try to be low impact once we’re here.  I suppose we could have been super environmental and not played but… Hey! It’s 12:31 am! It’s not Earth Day anymore! Yeah!

It was over a decade ago, when I was barely of legal age to gain entry into a bar, that I used to frequent a small, smoky bar in my native Long Island, NY, and used to catch the house band that played every Monday night. The house band was a blues, funk, and roots-rock outfit that played a wide array of music, and was known for the stellar musical prowess of its members. Anchoring this band was lead guitar player and singer / songwriter Andy Falco, whose slick bluesy electric guitar solos were an oft anticipated segment of each song.

Railroad Earth always attracts a massive crowd, and I had to soon forgotten the multiple block lines that can accumulate beside the Ogden on a big night.

“Get Lost in the Great North Woods” is the perfect way to describe Hoxeyville Music Festival.  The 8^th annual festival was held in the Manistee National Forest in Northern Michigan.  Each year Hoxeyville has grown and improved this year followed suit and featured a bigger and better lineup than ever before, cleaner and more organized festival grounds, and the largest crowd to date at around 4,000 people.  One of the greatest things about Hoxeyville is the family atmosphere, whether it was a grandparent and grandchild watching a mid-day set, lon

Greensky Bluegrass has had an incredible summer so far.  The Kalamazoo, MI-based ‘newgrass’ quintet tours nationally and were recently featured at the Rockygrass Festival in Lyons, CO, on the main stage at the legendary Grey Fox Festival in upstate New York and performed in front of an audience of thousands at the All Good Festival in West Virginia.