Grand Ole Opry stars and husband and wife, Marty Stuart and Connie Smith, attend an event in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Ford Theater Wednesday. Photo courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame

Nashville, Tenn. — Country music icons Marty Stuart and Connie Smith held a “Gift of Love” ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum’s Ford Theater on Wed. February 13th. The cause, a sweetheart gift to the museum of instruments, stage costumes, photographs and other artifacts from the couple’s famed career.

Other items included in the gift to the museum included items once owned by some of Country and Bluegrass music’s biggest stars including, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Roy Nichols. All culled from an extensive collection of Country Music artifacts and mementos Stuart has collected through out the years.

Among the gifts was Lester Flatt’s 1950 Martin D-28 “Lester” guitar.

Known as “the holy grail of bluegrass guitars,” this instrument was purchased by Flatt for $115 at a Charleston, West Virginia, pawnshop in 1956. Home to Flatt’s world renowned G-run for nearly 25 years, the Martin was used on most of Flatt & Scruggs’s classic recordings and live performances, including Grand Ole Opry broadcasts and their appearances on the national television show Beverly Hillbillies and the Martha White-sponsored Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry.

The pearl inlay and snowflake patterns on the fingerboard were not Martin factory issue. When the guitar was entrusted for repair to independent Chattanooga luthier Mike Longworth, the fledgling craftsman also added the pearl inlay and glued his business card into the guitar. It was Longworth’s fifth job and the “L-5″ inlay stands for Longworth’s fifth, which made both him and the guitar famous.

In 1998, the Martin Company issued a Lester Flatt Limited Edition Signature guitar, which included a perfectly duplicated “L-5″ inlay. A series of 50 were made and sold.

In 1972, Flatt loaned the long-retired iconic instrument to Stuart, the young bluegrass prodigy who had joined his band that year and who was also living in the Flatt home. Stuart fell in love with the guitar’s familiar “rich and full million-dollar sound” and adopted it for live performances and recordings until the early 1980s. After that, Stuart continued to use the instrument on some recordings, but did not take it on the road. “It’s possibly one of the greatest rhythm instruments ever made,” Stuart said.

When Flatt retired and disbanded his bluegrass band, Stuart sadly returned the instrument thinking he would never see it again. Some time after Flatt’s death in May 1979, Stuart purchased the instrument from Flatt’s daughter, Brenda. Flatt & Scruggs were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985.Country Music Hall Of Fame^® and Museum

An extensive breakdown of Marty Stuart and Connie Smith’s generous gift to the community is below.

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Nashville Tenn., — Due to the chart success and fan response from the band’s single, “Seven Miles From Wichita” it seems only fitting that Carrie Hassler and Hard Rain will kick off their 2008 tour Friday, February 15th on Wichita’s CBS KWCH TV morning show. Hassler and Hard Rain will also play that evening at the Wichita Winter Bluegrass Festival now in it’s 19th year. On the 16th the group will perform at the annual Mid-Winter Bluegrass Festival held at the Northglenn Ramada Plaza, Denver, Colorado.

The Group will also be back in the studio this month putting the finishing touches on their, as of yet, untitled 2nd release for Rural Rhythm Records with Producer Jim VanCleve. An exact release date isn’t available at this time but expect to see it later this year.

Hassler and Company hit the road again in March and April with shows booked in Canada, Washington, Georgia, Minnesota, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee before heading overseas in May to perform at the European World of Bluegrass in The Netherlands followed by a U.K. tour.

Currently in the works is a mini-tour with Mountain Heart and the legendary Tony Rice.

“Powerful performances” and “incredible vocals” have become common phrases to describe the band comprised of Carrie Hassler, Keith McKinnon, Kevin McKinnon, Travis Anderson, Josh Miller and Jamie Harper. Dates are continually being added to this year’s tour.

For more information, please visit the band’s site at: www.carriehasslerandhardrain.com

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Kathy Mattea “COAL”

Nashville, Tenn - On April 1, 2008, Grammy-award winning singer Kathy Mattea will release her 17th album, “Coal,” a collection of songs paying tribute to her West Virginian family heritage in the region’s coal mining culture. “Coal” was produced by country singer / songwriter / performer Marty Stuart.

Appropriately, best-selling novelist and fellow West Virginia native Homer Hickam (”Rocket Boys” and the upcoming “Red Helmet,” a romantic tale set in a collapsed mine) provides liner notes for the album, which plays like a textured novel itself, and features a trio of Nashville A-list players: Byron House (bass); Bill Cooley (guitar); and Stuart Duncan (fiddle, banjo). Producer Stuart also plays guitar and mandolin, and duets with guest background vocalist Patty Loveless on the track, “Blue Diamond Mines.” Tim O’Brien and sister Mollie O’Brien, longtime musical compatriots of Mattea’s, share the other background vocals. John Catchings on cello; Randy Leago on keyboards and accordion; and guest steel player Fred Newell round out the album’s sound.

The tragic Sago Mine disaster, which killed twelve miners in 2006, brought back memories of the Farmington Mine disaster of 1968 near Fairmont, WV - an event that still haunts the then-9-year-old Mattea, whose grandfathers were miners and whose mother worked for the union. “When Sago happened, I got catapulted back to that moment in my life and thought, ‘I need to do something with this emotion, and maybe this album is the place to channel it.’ I knew the time was right.”

Mattea carries on the Appalachian tradition of the “songcatcher” with “Coal.” The album features traditional and contemporary songs, many of them by songwriters with Appalachian roots. Songs by Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler, Hazel Dickens, Si Kahn, Utah Phillips, Merle Travis and Darrell Scott were all chosen to articulate “the lifestyle, the bigger struggles,” and “to speak to the sense of place and sense of attachment people have to each other and to the land.”

Mattea’s own connection to and respect for the land (and for the fate of Earth) was renewed in 2006 after she attended Al Gore’s now-landmark global warming power-point presentation at Vanderbilt University. She “walked out with a burning commitment to take this message to as many people as I can.” She trained with Gore and top scientists, and now travels with the Climate Project presenting the slide-show lecture to audiences across the United States. “I want to spread the word of hope to regular people. We really can be part of the Solution,” Mattea says of the education project. “Even the smallest action empowers us to change our world.”

Of the new album, Mattea reckons, “It’s a coming together of a lot of different threads of my life.” “Coal” will be released on Mattea’s newly formed label Captain Potato Records. Distribution and marketing will be handled by Thirty Tigers/RED.

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Heidi Talbot “In Love and Light” (Compass Records)

Nashville, Tenn. - Look out for a new star in the glittering firmament of great Irish singers: with the release of her new album “In Love and Light,” Heidi Talbot is truly set to shine. Drawing on the full, diverse spectrum of influences that inform her singing, “In Love and Light” complements Talbot’s exquisitely expressive, honeyed yet ardent voice with guest contributions from producer Boo Hewerdine, Eddi Reader, ex-Solas guitarist John Doyle, fiddler John McCusker and flute/whistle ace Michael McGoldrick.

The launch of “In Love and Light” at Glasgow’s world-renowned Celtic Connections festival last month kicked off an exciting year for Talbot, who’ll be featured as a guest on forthcoming albums by Radiohead drummer Philip Selway and the new trio collaboration of John McCusker, Kris Drever and Idlewild singer Roddy Woomble.

To sample tracks from In Love and Light click here, and more info on Heidi Talbot found here.

Karan Casey signs to the Compass Records Group

Karan Casey “Ships in the Forest” (Compass Records)

The Compass Records Group is excited to announce the signing of Karan Casey, an artist whose voice has been described as “Angelic. Haunting. Spellbinding.” (The Calgary Herald) and “among the loveliest in folk music…” (The Boston Globe).

On “Ships in the Forest,” (release date: April 8th) her fifth solo album and debut with the Compass Records Group, Casey’s warm, soulful voice ebbs and flows around ballads both timely and timeless. Produced once again by Donald Shaw (of Capercaillie fame), the album was recorded at Casey’s home in County Cork and features the members of her current touring band, Caoimhín Vallely (piano), Kate Ellis (cello) and Robbie Overson (guitar) along with special guests Kris Drever, Niall Vallely and Cillian Vallely.

The songs found on “Ships in the Forest” range from fresh arrangements of tried and true folk standards (”Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” and “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye”) to “The Fiddle and the Drum”, Joni Mitchell’s 1969 anti-war madrigal. Casey says of the album: “I feel that this is by far my most ambitious album to date. I think it has taken me all my years as a singer to come to the point of feeling confident enough to tackle the big songs within the traditional repertoire.”

Casey began 2008 with critically acclaimed appearances at the renowned Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow and will be touring North America throughout February and March.

To hear samples from “Ships in the Forest” click here.

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