Ron Block interview on The Rabbit Room.

Alison Krauss & Union Station’s new recording Paper Airplane will be released April 12. Stay tuned to Alison’s website for tour dates. The official Alison Krauss YouTube channel features “Behind the Scenes” videos of the making of Paper Airplane.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]An instrumental version with my 1938 Martin D28 Herringbone through a Neumann U87 and KM54. The older I get the more I realize the truth of this song. This is the Friend that will never leave or forsake you.

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs [...]

I love the butt-kickin’ sound of bluegrass banjo – Scruggs, Crowe, the other Jimmy Martin banjoists. When we have that sound as a base, when we have studied and embodied the passion inherent in it, we then have the tools to go on and play other forms of music using that passion, tone, dynamics, and [...]

In the Shadow of Your Wings
I wrote this song one morning in the early nineties after I woke up with the melody in my head. This is from a cd by The Forbes Family which I produced back in the mid-1990s, with Lisa Forbes singing lead. Barry Bales (bass), Dan Tyminski (rhythm guitar), Adam Steffey [...]

Searching
In 1999 my friend Luke Bulla told me, “You have to see this movie.” I met him at the theater to see The Matrix, and it really blew me away. I saw a story that was essentially my story – a man awakening, coming to know who he really is, and learning to operate in [...]

God created us for union with himself; the Bible is full of depictions of God as a lover. Earthly marriage is a shadow cast by this eternal truth. I wrote this as a picture of God’s love for us – His desire that we should wholly trust and give our hearts over to Him in [...]

A Bluegrass introduction I wrote over on The Rabbit Room:
Bluegrass: A Peek In the You’unsTube Window

Bluegrass banjo has boundaries.
It isn’t played with a flatpick and strummed. That’s part of the boundary; it uses fingerpicks.
Traditionally it uses rolls; however Earl Scruggs thought of them at the time, that’s what they are: right hand patterns that can vary infinitely according to the melody and chord structure of a song. Even melodic banjo [...]

While I agree that there are many ways to play a song, there is incredible value in transcribing and learning things note for note – especially from people like Scruggs or Crowe. The young boy J.D. did not become Mr. J.D. Crowe the butt-kicker in a vacuum; he learned Earl’s stuff note for note, tried [...]