Sugar Hill
This is the second solo album for Hall, resonator guitarist (dobroist) for emerging “new” bluegrass band The Infamous Stringdusters. Recorded mostly live in the studio, it boasts eight instrumental and three vocal tracks, on which Hall sings lead. He plays a mahogany Meredith resonator, a 1929 National squareneck Style 2 Tricone, a Bear Creek Hawaiian and a koa Harper resonator.
Landslide
In their previous incarnation, experimental bluegrass outfit BGUG had a six-piece lineup that included pedal steel. But the group broke up in 2002 after four years and three albums, leaving peers Yonder Mountain String Band, Railroad Earth and the now-defunct Leftover Salmon to kick out the jams.
Frog Pad
These guys be jammin’. In their first two years, Yonder Mountain String Band went from playing Colorado coffee shops with a dozen people in the audience to gigging at prestigious bluegrass and folk festivals and selling out small venues across the land.
Dualtone
A couple of things work in this disc’s favor.
First, it’s been four years since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s last full-length studio album, “Bang Bang Bang,” and that had but one in-house track; so it’s been 10 years since an album of mostly original material (1994’s “Acoustic”).
Swollen Records
The David Thom Band is a breath of fresh bluegrass air.
At least enough that fellow Marin County, California, resident and mandolinist extraordinaire David Grisman endorses them and puts in right-speaker appearances on original Thom compositions “Rowan’s Run” and the title track. Other guests on the CD are bluegrass diva Kathy Kallick and guitar maestro Jim Nunally.
