Sammy Shelor is a proud native son of southwest Virginia still calling Meadows of Dan home. His granddad famously fashioned a banjo out of an old pressure cooker lid when Sammy was just four years old with the promise of a real one once he learned a couple of songs.
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This show spotlights the New England collective known as Crocodile River Music, a talented and diverse collaborative dedicated to preserving and celebrating traditional African culture. -
This edition of the show featured a refreshing hour with Tarheel songstress and cellist Shana Tucker and her engaging accompanist Christian Tambur. Together they brought us a tasteful sampling of what’s been dubbed ChamberSoul, that weaves jazz, folk, acoustic pop, and a touch of R&B into melodies that might echo in your head for days.
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The music you’ll hear on this show is hard to put in any kind of cubbyhole as it represents the attempt of two Texas born musicians to make some kind of musical sense of the world as we know it.
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Guitarist, singer and interpreter of the music we call the blues, Elizabeth Wise was born in Virginia and currently calls RVA home. But she's traveled the world inhaling that music wherever she finds herself. Her career now spans more than a decade of performing professionally in bars, clubs, and living rooms as well as on festival stages up and down the East Coast.
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It’s been a couple of years since JAMinc’s produced an In Your Ear radio show. The pandemic kept artists home and our Studio A sacred space was way too confined to allow any social distancing at all. We just shut down for a while, then tried live-streaming with no audience for a few shows and then began a great relationship with Hardywood Craft Brewery, giving us access to their Scott’s Addition Barrel Room. That’s where we recorded this loving reunion of members of Page Wilson’s band Reckless Abandon.
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We’re excited to share with you some of the range, the creativity and the energy of Asheville North Carolina’s Fireside Collective. For a relatively new band, together since 2014, they’ve come a long way in impressing fans and critics alike.
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The New York Times says, “the one thing certain about Nellie McKay is the size and range of her talent…a sly, articulate musician who sounds comfortable in any era.” Rolling Stone calls her a “renegade songwriter with an ultra-flexible Great American Songbook sensibility, who finds modern resonances everywhere.”
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Now in his late twenties, Chesapeake native Eric Stanley began playing violin at age 12 in a very music-focused family. He, his sister and brother would sing along as their mom played piano. Taken as an elective in middle school, the violin soon developed into Eric’s passion, joining the Richmond Symphony Youth Orchestra while still in high school. At VCU, Eric began creating YouTube videos remixing popular songs, fusing improvisational violin with hip hop, pop, and classical.
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This is a special edition of In Your Ear, paying tribute to the late Helen White, musician, educator and life partner to renowned Virginia luthier and guitarist Wayne Henderson. The two had met at a festival in the mid-sixties when he noticed her guitar had a loose bridge that needed repair…a chore he was more than willing and able to handle.
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Aaron Burdett’s way with words is as prolific and genuine as the man himself. He grew up the oldest of three boys in the small town of Saluda, NC, where the Blue Ridge meets the Great Smokies. At age 10 he was introduced to the music of Cat Stevens, the first of many musical influences that include the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Norman Blake, and David Grier. During his teens, Aaron found his voice in a choral setting and performed in musical theater. In 1992 he went to the renowned Governor’s School of North Carolina for choral music.
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We revisit an In Your Ear session with five talented players who had a short but sweet ride as a progressive band called Cadillac Sky. Organized in 2002 in the Dallas/Fort Worth area by lead vocalist/songwriter Bryan Simpson, applying a Texas state of mind to the bluegrass template, the band turned intriguing tunes and solid musicianship, into a meteoric career. And we finish the hour with some more traditional but also very contemporary bluegrass from Richmond-native Rebecca Hoggan Frazier and her Nashville-based band Hit & Run. -
In this episode of In Your Ear, we share the work of three accomplished Carolina acts who have all been featured on this program before. First up, we revisit the two Swiss-born brothers Jens and Uwe Kruger and their bassist New Yorker Joel Landsberg.
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We’ll spend our full hour with three gifted and creative young musicians who have established themselves as prominent players in the firmament of today’s Blu2grassers in Brooklyn community. Try to turn up the volume and turn down the distractions, and savor the tasteful musical gifts of guitarist Jordan Tice, acoustic bassist Paul Kowert and fiddler Brittany Haas.
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n Your Ear presents some of the most striking and innovative sounds ever heard in Studio A from the New York based trio THIEFS. Not thieves…but THIEFS. As the group says, THIEFS is a grammatically incoherent jazz bastardization, and as you’ll hear, this acoustic/electronic amalgam is tough to put into words. With drums, bass, sax and vocals, THIEFS take us to places that are both noisy and dreamy. It’s quite a ride, so be prepared.
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Rather than release yet another new album in 2012 , musical innovator and provocateur Beck Hanson decided to release only the sheet music in an elaborate and elegant package called The Song Reader, where he basically said if you want to hear this, you have to play it yourself. So the classically trained Atlantic Chamber Ensemble (ACE)…many of them members of the Richmond Symphony, took the bait and had friends from all over the country arrange Beck’s compositions for their eleven string, wind and percussion players. ACE’s Project Beck connects the rock and classical music worlds in an innovative and compelling way.
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Howard Levy is one of the most creative and innovative musicians on the planet. This multiple Grammy winner and harmonica master also knows his way around the 88’s. And his National resophonic guitarist partner Chris Siebold is always in the right place at the right time. Sit back and experience a full hour of the artistry of Howard Levy and Chris Siebold.
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We’ll start off with two members of the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame for their roles in the groundbreaking band, the Country Gentlemen, influential banjo man Eddie Adcock and legendary bassist Tom Gray. Eddie and Tom were joined by Eddie’s wife and musical partner of nearly forty years, Martha Adcock, to bring the memories home. We’ll hear from world-class harp guitarist Stephen Bennett with his brother Jim on piano.
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Wil Maring is a past Chris Austin songwriting winner at MerleFest. She is joined by past Winfield, Kansas-winning guitarist Robert Bowlin on guitar and fiddle for an enchanting evening in Studio A from November of 2009. Then we’ll enjoy meaty jazz fusion from Kip Williams’ Richmond-based super group BopNation.
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He’s a son of the Jersey Shore and his winding musical road has run through Memphis, Greenwich Village, Austin and Nashville. His songs have been covered by luminaries including Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen and Vince Gill. His name is Greg Trooper. And two brothers from Switzerland who transitioned from the Alps to the Appalachians in search of the music that most resonated with them, the Kruger Brothers--along with Greg Trooper--are our featured artists for the next hour of In Your Ear.
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Their name alone is compelling. When we think of a stray dog or cat, we picture a wayward, underfed, neglected creature that’s lost and looking for home or maybe never had one. But when you apply the adjective to a bird, the very symbol of freedom and purpose, you have a thought-provoking paradox that goes a long way in describing what musically motivates the Pennsylvania-based string trio, the Stray Birds.
