Burlington, MA - Rounder Records has announced that its artists have received twelve Grammy^® nominations for the 50th Annual Grammy^® Awards, the most nominations in Rounder history! The awards ceremony will take place on February 10th at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and once again will be broadcast live on the CBS Television Network at 8pm EST.

Rounders Bluegrass Grammy^® Nominations include:

Banjo giant Tony Trischka received his first Grammy^® nomination for Best Bluegrass Album with Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular and joining him in this category is legendary bluegrass band J.D. Crowe & The New South with a nomination for Lefty’s Old Guitar. Mary Chapin Carpenter earned a Grammy^® nod in the Best Traditional Folk Album for The Calling while string sensation Cathy Fink garnered a nomination for her acclaimed album Banjo Talkin’.

Alison Krauss picked up nominations for Best Female Country Vocal (”Simple Love”) and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals (”Gone Gone Gone [Done Moved On]”) with Robert Plant. Krauss, as a solo artist, collaborator, producer, and with Union Station, has 20 Grammy^® awards to her credit, the most of any female artist or any country artist. She’s also tied for 7th on the all-time Grammy^® winners list.

Below is the complete list of Rounder Records’ Grammy^® nominations:

Robert Plant | Alison Krauss
Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals - “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On),” from Raising Sand

Alison Krauss

Best Female Country Vocal - “Simple Love,” from A Hundred Miles or More: A Collection

J.D. Crowe & The New South
Best Bluegrass Album - Lefty’s Old Guitar

Tony Trischka
Best Bluegrass Album - Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular

Cathy Fink
Best Traditional Folk Album - Banjo Talkin’

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Editor’s note: We’ve met and visited with a lot of wonderful people in the bluegrass world in the past few years, and especially in the last six months that we’ve been involved in our Web site. We asked a handful of some memorable people we’ve visited with over the past year and invited them to share a bluegrass Christmas memory. Today’s Christmas Memory is from The Storyteller - Tom T. Hall.

One Christmas eve when I was nine years old, I lived with my parents and my eight brothers and sisters in the hills of Kentucky. This would have been 1945.

It had snowed five or six inches that day and we lived seven miles from town. My brother Quinton, who worked the factories up north was to come home for the holidays and had said he was bringing me something special.

As the cold blustery day wore on and darkness came, we realized that he could not get through on the rough country roads that had drifted with snow.

I had gone upstairs in the old farmhouse and gone to bed as the day seemed hopeless. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard shouts from downstairs. I jumped out of bed and ran down to see what the excitement was about.

We looked out the window toward the road and saw headlights bobbing in the distance. My brother Quinton had left his car in town and had rented a four-wheel drive Jeep.

My present was a big red colored Gibson guitar and three 78 rpm Bill Monroe records. The next morning I packed up my new guitar and my three new Bill Monroe records; I walked about three miles to where my friend Curly Jarvis lived. He owned a Gibson mandolin, and when Curly came to the door he broke into a big smile. I said “Get your mandolin, we’re starting up a band.”

Merry Christmas Everyone!
Tom T

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Casey Driessen

Casey Driessen is booked for a pair of special Nashville, Tenn. performances on December 28th and 29th at the world famous Station Inn.

Casey will be joined by muti-instrumentalist and vocalist, Luke Bulla on Friday evening in an intimate acoustic set. Bulla will share twin fiddle and singing duties as well as performing on guitar.

Saturdays show will up the amps a bit with an “electric set” by The Colorfools - featuring Tom Giampietro on drums and Jason Oettel on bass. Bawn in the Mash will also be performing on Saturday’s set.

Other Casey Driessen News

While Driessen is one of the fastest-rising sidemen on the bluegrass circuit, he’s a restless explorer, a bold boundary crosser who listens for inspiration from Tennessee to Tibet. There’s no solace in safety for this remarkable 28-year-old, and with his debut album 3D, a worldly instrumentalist and composer is able to show off a little, not merely as a fast and inventive fiddler, but as a visionary who translates his passion for tradition and improvisation into important new American music.

Driessen recently embarked on the first-ever US-sponsored cultural mission to Tibet with The Sparrow Quartet (Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck and Ben Sollee). The group also gave several performances along China’s eastern seaboard, where they brought America’s oldest and most original music form to, arguably, the world’s oldest civilization through a special grant from the US State Department applied for by the Beijing branch of the US Bureau of Culture and Education.

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Rounder Records currently has 2-part interview with Rhonda Vincent online discussing her forthcoming release “Good Thing Going” on Rounder. The CD is currently scheduled for a release date of January 8th, 2008.

In the interview Rhonda discusses the projects special guests, the original songs, and life on the road with her backing band “The Rage.”

In most everything that we do, we’re always attempting to create something unique. I think having my own studio gives me the freedom to do that. There’s no longer this time constraint, someone saying “You have to finish this up because we have somebody else coming in.” Most of the time, we have the freedom to create. Some of the musicians that were in the studio were saying, “You’re not just here recording tracks, you’re creating something,” which is good to hear! Rhonda Vincent

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