Richard Meyer, a singer-songwriter who also was an integral part of the folk music scene in New York’s Greenwich Village during the 1980s and 1990s as a booker for the Speakeasy and longtime editor of Fast Folk Musical Magazine (1986-1997), died May 14, 2012 at age 59. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Canadian singer-songwriter Rose Cousins' new CD We Have Made A Spark moves into the #1 spot on the Roots Music Report folk radio chart this week, while Justin Townes Earle's Nothing's Going to Change the Way You Feel About Me Now continues to top the roots country chart. [To view the Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
Funeral services will be held on Sunday for Everett Lilly, one of the forefathers of bluegrass music, who died May 8 at his home in southern West Virginia. He was 87. [To read the article in its entirety, click on the headline.]
AcousticMusicScene.com is pleased to publish the monthly Top Albums and Songs charts compiled by Richard Gillmann from radio playlists submitted to FOLKDJ-L, an electronic discussion group for DJs and others interested in all folk-based music on the radio. In April 2012, 1000 Pound Machine, a new release by Nashville-based singer-songwriter Kate Campbell topped the albums chart, while the classic instrumental tune "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Earl Scruggs, the pioneering banjo player and bluegrass legend who died on March 28 at age 88, was reportedly the most-played song on folk radio during the month. [To view the charts, click on the headline.}
The folk, folk-rock and singer-songwriter communities lost one of their most ardent champions and promoters last week with the passing of Pete Fornatale, a pioneering New York radio DJ, who introduced me and many others to some wonderful artists whose music has become the soundtrack of our lives. [To read the full article -- including reflections from artists who knew Pete and excerpts from an interview I did with him in 1989 -- click on the headline.]
Nearly 200 people are expected to converge on the Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Asheville, May 17-20, for the fifth annual Southeast Regional Folk Alliance (SERFA) Conference -- an extended weekend of contemporary and traditional folk music, networking, education and workshops. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
The Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) hosts two one-day mini-conferences this spring: One is slated for Saturday, May 5, at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center in Bethesda, Maryland, while the other is set for Saturday, June 2, at the University of Massachusetts-Boston campus. Showcase artists have recently been selected and workshops and panel discussions have been lined-up for the events that are designed especially to give artists, presenters, DJs, agents and others engaged in the folk music scene a small taste of what takes place during the organization’s annual conference each fall. [To read the entire article, click on the headline.]
Albums by Carolina Chocolate Drops and Darrell Scott continue to top the Roots Music Report folk and roots country radio charts, respectively, this week. [To view the current Roots Music Report Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
The Carolina Chocolate Drops' album Leaving Eden, the follow-up to its 2010 Grammy Award-winning Genuine Negro Jig, retains the #1 spot on the Roots Music Report folk radio chart for the third week in a row, while. Darrell Scott's Long Ride Home continues to top the roots country chart. [To view the current Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
Thirty-two songwriters have been named as finalists in the 2012 Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Competition for Emerging Songwriters. Chosen from among 800 submissions from around the world, the finalists will perform the two songs they submitted during the New Folk Concerts slated for Saturday and Sunday afternoons, May 26 and 27, as part of the Kerrville Folk Festival. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
The Carolina Chocolate Drops' album Leaving Eden, the follow-up to its 2010 Grammy Award-winning Genuine Negro Jig, retains the #1 spot on the Roots Music Report folk radio chart for a second week, while. Darrell Scott's Long Ride Home continues to top the roots country chart. [To view the current Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
Ten finalists have been named in the 2012 Wildflower! Performing Songwriter Contest. Each will perform two songs on the Singer Songwriter Stage during the 20th annual Wildflower! arts and music festival in Richardson, Texas, just a few minutes north of Dallas. Billed as North Texas’ largest music festival, it takes place, May 18-20. [To read the article, click on the headline.]
