Welcome to this month’s Bluegrass Briefing, a monthly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. Pod news Sean Sullivan interviewLindsay Lou’s Bluegrass Women interviewJulian Lage Australian tour dates News and announcements - church street news Bela Fleck pre-order Releases (The Grass is New) Billy Strings - So Much For GoodbyesLindsay Lou - Bluegrass WomenBryan Sutton - From Roots to Bra...

My guest this week is 5 time Grammy award winning engineer, mixer and producer Sean Sullivan. Sean has worked with dozens of artists, including Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, The Steeldrivers, The Del McCoury Band, Michael Cleveland, Andrew Marlin, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway and Mighty Poplar. We chat about his route into recording and how he only came to love string band music when he started working on it. Sean also talks about what he learned in his time at The Butcher Shoppe Stu...

My guest this week is Lindsay Lou. I chatted with Lindsay a while back, about her record Queen of Time. This time we're talking about her brand new record Bluegrass Women. Lindsay reveals how the project came about and why she wanted to make a record celebrating the contributions of women to bluegrass. We talk about the musicians on the record - including Sarah Jarosz, Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Laurie Lewis and Alison Brown - and why mentorship and multi-generational music making a...

Welcome to this month’s Bluegrass Briefing, a monthly series of episodes taking a look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. News and announcements - church street news Bluegrass Album Band reissueBlue Waters BluegrassDawg at 80 videos Releases (The Grass is New) Lindsay Lou - Bluegrass WomenMike Marshall Sings BluegrassKen and Brad Kolodner - Hand’s CoveNew Acoustic Collective - Double Course Scroll on Buddy Telluride d...

To celebrate Punch Brothers' new record, The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers, I'm reposting a fascinating conversation I had with Brittany Haas after she joined the band. This is the first Punch album with Brittany in the line-up so I thought it would be fun to listen back and hear how she joined the band and what her first shows were like. I'd interviewed Gabe Witcher a few days after he played his final shows with Punch Brothers at Telluride and, almost exactly a year later to the day, ...

My guest this week is Jerry Douglas and we're celebrating the reissue of Boone Creek's first album. Boone Creek has a fascinating story behind it, which we covered in last week's interview with Scott Billington, who put together the reissue for Craft Recordings. In this episode I chat with Jerry about the place Boone Creek had in his career, his memories of the original sessions and what the band were trying to achieve, what it was like to hear the lost tracks for the first time in 50 years a...

My guest this week is Scott Billington. Scott is a Grammy winning record producer, an author, a record company exec and a musician. But what we're chatting about in this episode is a fascinating story about a pivotal string band album and it's journey to being reissued with extra tracks that went missing for decades. The record in question is Boone Creek's debut album Boone Creek, from the band Jerry Douglas and Ricky Skaggs formed after they left J.D. Crowe and the New South. Scott talk...

Welcome to the Bluegrass Briefing for July 2026, your monthly look at what’s going on in the world of bluegrass and beyond. Here are the links to stuff mentioned in this episode. News and Announcements (Church Street News) McCoury & Douglas Family Pickin PartyBéla Fleck's My Bluegrass Heart tour Releases (The Grass is New) Natalie & Brittany Haas - North NodeNoaBass - Late BloomerVoices: A Folk Opera Scroll on Buddy Punch Brothers - Found in a Frozen Fog Other bits Full list ...

This week's Bitesize episode comes from a fascinating conversation I had with Tristan Scroggins in 2021. In this section Tristan reflects on what it means to come to bluegrass as an 'outsider' and how culture and connection aren't just about geographical borders. Growing up in New Mexico, despite learning traditional bluegrass from his father, Tristan felt a disconnect from the roots of the music. Later, when he moved to Nashville, he found himself wondering exactly why he loves bluegrass so ...

My guest this week is Missy Raines and we're talking about one of her all time favourite records - The Seldom Scene's Act Two We talk about how Missy grew up listening to The Country Gentlemen and The Seldom Scene, thanks to her parents' love of bluegrass, and how the band played a formative role in her early musical life, in particular how Tom Gray influenced her to become a bass player. We also discuss the shift that was happening in bluegrass and string band music in the early '70s and wha...