Carolina Chocolate Drops' Leaving Eden -- a collection of original compositions, covers and traditional tunes -- returns to the #1 position on the Roots Music Report folk radio chart this week, while Texan Ray Wylie Hubbard's The Grifter's Hymnal continues to top the roots country chart. [To view the latest Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
New Music Seminar, the granddaddy of American music conferences, returns to New York, June 17-20. In addition to a number of daytime panels, workshops, intensives and keynotes at Manhattan’s Webster Hall, an accompanying NMS New York Music Festival will feature four nights of performances in 17 New York City venues. These include three nights of acoustic music showcases at The Living Room, hosted by Folk Alliance International. {To read the full article, click the headline.]
Canadian singer-songwriter Rose Cousins' We Have Made a Spark returned to the #1 spot on the Roots Music Report folk radio chart this week, while Texan Ray Wylie Hubbard's The Grifter's Hymnal moved into the top spot on the roots country chart. [To view the current Folk and Roots Country Top 50 albums charts, click on the headline.]
The Southwest Regional Folk Alliance (SWRFA) hosts a one-day mini-conference in Longmont, Colorado on Saturday, June 23, 2012. Designed to provide folks with a sampling of what takes place at the organization’s annual weekend-long conference in Austin, Texas (Sept. 27-30), the day-long event is slated for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Longmont is located in Boulder County, 37 miles north of Denver. The application deadline for artists interested in showcasing their talents has been extended until Monday, June 11. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Nominees for the Americana Music Association’s 2012 Americana Honors & Awards were announced on May 31 during a celebratory event at The Grammy Museum’s Clive Davis Theatre in Los Angeles, California. With nods for Album of the Year, Artist of the Year, Song of the Year and Duo/Group of the Year,Jason Isbell snagged the most nominations, along with his group, the 400 Unit. [To read the full article and see the list of nominees in six categories, as voted by members of the Americana Music Association, 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. Topping the albums chart for May 2012 was Bill Evans' In Good Company, on which 26 musicians join the noted banjo player, while self-proclaimed Floridian "leftneck" style folk and Americana singer-songwriter Grant Peeples' "Things Have Changed" was reportedly the most-played song on folk radio during the month. [To view the Top Albums and Songs charts for May 2012, click on the headline.]
The Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) invites the public to attend a 75-minute, hootenanny-style Musical Tribute to Woody Guthrie and a series of 15-minute artist showcases that will take place on Saturday, June 2, from 3-7 p.m., at the Lipke Auditorium on the University of Massachusetts Boston campus. These special events, for which $10 tickets will be available at the door, are part of a day-long mini-conference featuring workshops and panel discussions that the nonprofit organization is hosting to give artists, presenters, DJs, agents and others engaged in the folk music scene a small taste of what takes place during its annual conference in The Catskills each fall. Proceeds from the events will be shared with WUMB, Boston’s NPR Music Station, with which NERFA is collaborating to open them to the public. [To read the article in its entirety, click on the headline.]
Five songwriters and a songwriting duo have been named as winners in the 2012 Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Competition for Emerging Songwriters. Edie Carey (Chicago, IL), Nicolette Good (San Antonio, TX), Whit Hill (Nashville, TN), Korby Lenker (Nashville, TN), Alicia McGovern (Salt Lake City, Utah), and The Sea The Sea (a contemporary duo featuring Connecticut Sate Troubadour Chuck E. Costa and West Virginia's Mira Stanley) were selected from among 32 finalists who performed two songs each during the New Folk Concerts on May 26 and 27 as part of the Kerrville Folk Festival, an 18-day event that continues through Sunday, June 10, at the Quiet Valley Ranch in the Texas Hill Country. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Carolina Chocolate Drops' third full-length album, Leaving Eden, a collection of original compositions, covers and traditional tunes, moved into the #1 spot on the Roots Music Report folk radio chart last week. 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.]
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.]
