✭Mountaingrass Tickets on sale August 1st✭
Tickets will be available for online purchase on the website from August 1st. There is a small increase in the price from last year due to increased costs in running the festival. I hope that will support us with your presence at Mountaingrass and enjoy the amazing music and ambience that we all love.
✭International Acts Mountaingrass 2019✭
✭ Midnight Skyracer (UK) ✭
IBMA Momentum Award nominated bluegrass band, Midnight Skyracer have been tearing up the UK bluegrass and folk scene since their inception less than two years ago. Their all star lineup and exciting live performances have sent them racing skywards at an astounding pace right from the start, with Leanne Thorose’s powerhouse vocals and driving mandolin; Tabitha Agnew’s sweet voice and virtuosic banjo playing; Eleanor Wilkie’s rock solid bass grooves; Laura Carrivick’s flair, being equally adept on both fiddle and dobro; and twin sister Charlotte’s agility on the guitar, with both sisters filling in the vocal harmonies.
“…these varied aspects of their musical personalities contribute to the greater good of a band playing for the song, for the singer, for the music.”
Ron Block
Alison Krauss & Union Station
Franklin, Tennessee
In just over a year of performing they have racked up an impressive number of major festival slots including Cambridge Folk Festival and Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, completed a tour of Germany and Switzerland as well as two UK tours. In February 2018 they released their critically acclaimed debut album, Fire. Most recently, the band became the first UK band to gain recognition in the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Momentum awards with a nomination for best band as well as Tabitha receiving a nomination in the instrumentalist category.
✭ Mike & Ruthy (USA)✭
When it comes to chemistry, Mike Merenda and Ruth Ungar have plenty to spare. Onstage, they are Mike + Ruthy, a husband-and-wife duo setting the indie-folk scene ablaze. Singers and storytellers, poets and parents, the two tour with their children in tow, embodying a down-home approach to Americana. Bouncing between festivals and intimate venues, these troubadours bring harmony-driven fiddle and banjo tunes to more than 100 shows a year. Road-tested material such as the pair’s celebrated reharmonizing of Woody Guthrie’s “My New York City” cement Merenda and Ungar’s status as a “national treasure,” according to peer Anaïs Mitchell. Merenda is a prolific songwriter, who’s recent crowd-pleasing piece, Sunshiner, was nominated for an International Folk Music Award for Song of the Year. It is an ode to renewable energy which simultaneously honors the past and looks to the future with the sing-along lyric, “Yes my Daddy was a miner, but I’m gonna be a sunshiner.” Ungar’s unique vocal style ranges from “a capella” balladry to earthy soul and country. She was raised in a folk music family and learned the fiddle at a young age. Her father is fiddler/composer Jay Ungar, best known for his composition Ashokan Farewell which she also enjoys performing.
✭ The South Carolina Broadcasters (USA)✭
“I’d like to think that if AP Carter had had more time to think about it and work things out, the Carter Family would have been singing like the Broadcasters.” — Tim O’Brien
The Broadcasters tour constantly through the Southeast. And with each release, they become tighter, somehow closer to reaching the heart of the music they obviously love. The harmonies are crisp. The playing is tight. The music is raw and raucous, heartfelt and beautiful. They are the South Carolina Broadcasters, and they are what is great about old time music.” — Dan Schram, Hopscotch Music Festival
The South Carolina Broadcasters are about as perfect an old-time trio as you’ll ever hear. And “Short Time to Stay Here” is a brilliant recording, with instruments providing luxuriant atmospheres for the trio’s riveting lead and harmony singing. ” — Jack Bernhardt, Raleigh News & Observer
The Broadcasters bridge their cross-generational gaps by course of talent – shared, divided, rehashed and revised – impelling some sort of experiential collision: through aching and dismay, transcendence and hope, noise and silence, body and soul, their interpretations seem to suggest that we are together, all of us, Southern children going forward at top volume. ”— Colton Wooten, Raleigh News & Observer
Clear, powerful playing. Great singing. Respect for the past, all the while setting the bar high for musicians of the future. Strong music.” — Joe Newberry
✭ Sonoran Dogs (USA)✭
Formed in 2011, The Sonoran Dogs have exploded upon the bluegrass scene! They have performed and headlined many festivals and concert venues in the Southwestern US, touring as far as Australia, from Melbourne to Brisbane and beyond. The “Dogs” are made up of seasoned veterans who have come together to enjoy bluegrass music and friendship, often times adding one or more “strays” on fiddle, dobro and even accordion! With every show, The Sonoran Dogs play with expertise, often improvising and showcasing original songs, traditional and contemporary music as well as an eclectic mix of Bluegrass, Folk, Americana, Celtic, and Newgrass.
✭Artists confirmed Mountaingrass 2019✭
✭ Strzelecki Stringbusters ✭
The Strzelecki Stringbusters (The Stringbusters) is a 13 piece string band featuring guitar, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, fiddle, double bass and harmonica. The group plays many styles of music from bluegrass and western swing to country and the blues. The band members live, work and play in the hills around the Strzelecki Ranges in Victoria’s Gippsland. They play a large number of local events in support of their wider community. The Stringbusters are also a regular feature at the Yinnar Hotel where they host a night of music and often feature local and visiting international acts.
✭ New Holland Honey Eaters (TAS) ✭
✭ Crooked Road (SA) ✭
PHILL PARKER (Guitar, vocals)
Phill has worked with many bands over the past 40 years playing acoustic guitar and singing harmony and lead vocals in the folk, country and bluegrass traditions. Recently Phill focussed on bluegrass, playing with Highly Strung in the 90s and then with Bridgeland Brothers Band and more recently Old South Bluegrass Band in the past decade. Crooked Road offers him the opportunity to do more song writing and contemporary acoustic music with a very fine group of musicians.
ANDREW HOOK (Mandolin, guitar, vocals)
Andrew immersed himself in the bluegrass genre in Melbourne in the late seventies, playing with The Rank Strangers and Paul Wookey. Since moving to Adelaide in the early nineties Andrew has focused on bluegrass and acoustic music, initially with Dingo Ridge and Grass Roots and most recently with Old South Bluegrass Band.
DAVE TAYLOR (Vocals, double bass)
Dave, born in the UK was fed a diet of Beatles, Stones, Pacemakers and all manner of 60s pop, before being musically awakened by the sounds of Daddy Cool, Chain, Axiom and their peers, following his migration Down Under. In 2007 he joined a community choir, and began playing and singing country/folk, bluegrass and retro pop. An invitation to join Old South Bluegrass Band laid out Dave’s musical path.
LEONARD COHEN (Vocals, dobro)
Leonard has played guitar and sung since his childhood in New Zealand. He sang in choirs, musicals and moved into folk and bluegrass in the 60’ when he began playing professionally with the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band before migrating to Australia. Leonard played solo and later with The Skillet Lickers before putting performance aside for some years. Joining Old South Bluegrass Band led him back to bluegrass, country and folk and Crooked Road gives Leonard room to experiment with creating an original vocal and instrumental sound.
✭ Slim Dime (VIC) ✭
“They also doff their hats to traditions and they clearly know and appreciate their musical antecedents….. Her voice is melodious and his playing very accomplished, making their work look effortless as do the best performers. The harmonies are sweet and nuanced, like the A.P. Carter vocal drift to and from the microphone that they use.” – Live Review Mountaingrass 2018 – Listening Through the Lens
“Slim Dime is a set of contradictions. It’s a 21st-century urban Australian hip duo whose musical choices are anachronistic & old-fashioned. Its instrumental work is simple yet produces alarmingly brilliant flashes. Sure, Jen & Chris have chemistry on stage but it’s reined in tight-until suddenly, passionately, it’s not. Contradictions. There’s a line Slim Dime tread when performing the sentimental and simplistic songs of the old-time repertoire; too straight and it would be cloying, too hip and it would be disrespectful. To make their live performances perfect would require only an audio overlay of the crackle, scratch, and clicks from an old 78 record. Or, you could do it in your head as you watch.”
– Leonard Cohen (2017)
Slim Dime are an acoustic duo featuring old-time mountain sounds, seamless harmonies and some mighty-fine pickin’. They make music that sounds as though it’s always existed somewhere on a mountaintop. Their material is both original songs and traditional songs made new. They reference the old time and bluegrass repertoire and write original compositions with mesmerising storytelling and precise musicianship with a broad emotional range. It’s music that makes you lean in and listen. Slim Dime are Jen Land on acoustic tenor guitar and vocals and Chris Taylor on acoustic guitar, banjo and vocals. Jen Land’s voice tells stories with nuance and emotion. Chris Taylor’s playing is intelligent and idiosyncratic. The songs talk of lives lived and lessons learned, of sorrows and of loss, but there is redemption too, and even joy. They journey through a country and folk music landscape of mountain shadows and careworn folks and beauty found in unlikely places.
‘Mary Jane’ included on the ABOTMA Women in Stringband Music Compilation CD – 2017
✭ The Lyrebirds (NSW) ✭
Banjo/Vocals: Jenny Shimmin
Fiddle/Vocals: Danielle Vita
✭ The 3 Jimmies (NSW) ✭
The 3 Jimmies consist of a Scot, an Englishman and a token Australian. Jimmy Rush and Nigel Lever had been playing for many years with the well-known bluegrass band Acoustic Shock when they met up with Quentin Fraser, who was part of the Wollongong bluegrass scene. All three players discovered a common love for playing fiddle tunes on guitar and could often be found at folk festivals picking until their fingers bled. At some point in time they decided that it would be a good idea to present bluegrass flat-picking guitar as The 3 Jimmies. Mandolin is occasionally ‘allowed’, as is the occasional Hank Williams song, and even some great Dobro. All three members of the band have been playing together in bluegrass lineups over the past 20 years, including Karen Lynne, Acoustic Shock, 3 Marketeers, The Willing Ponies… the list goes on. (Yes, we know there’s only one band member named Jimmy – a mere technicality).