“Everyone associated with Bluegrass Underground is excited about the 2010 season and we can’t wait for February 27th! Three incredible and eclectic acts, including the John Cowan Band, The Greencards & Mike Farris & the McCrary Sisters,  will be on display in the Volcano Room and we are thrilled to be filming the show in HD with the partnership with Todd Jarrell and WCTE. We hope a national audience will soon see the splendor and wonders of Cumberland Caverns as it plays host to some of the finest musicians on earth!”, says Todd Mayo, Bluegrass Underground Executive Producer.

Coming to Bluegrass Underground

Who:The John Cowan Band , The Greencards and Mike Farris & The McCrary Sisters
When: Saturday, February 27th at 1:00 p.m.
Where: The Volcano Room, Cumberland Caverns, McMinnville, TN

More Info: bluegrassunderground.com

Upcoming artist Mike Farris adds, “We are looking forward to performing in one of nature’s most wondrous music venues. Being 333 feet under the ground and making this beautiful music will surely be an amazing experience for us as much as the audience.”

Carol Young from The Greencards says, “‘One of the highlights of last year was our Bluegrass Underground show in the caves. We’ve had so many people who attended the show in this magical space tell us it’s one of the most amazing experiences they’ve had. Now, adding to the excitement, our next show in The Caves will be filmed for PBS… this is a huge honor us!”

Bluegrass Underground is a live concert and radio show held inside the Volcano Room — an amphitheater 333 feet underground, one of the most acoustically pure natural spaces on or under the earth.

Cumberland Caverns, a registered US National Natural Landmark, attracts thousands of visitors from across the US and around the world year-round. First discovered in 1810, Cumberland is Tennessee’s largest show cave. It offers daily walking tours, spelunking adventure trips, and overnight camping in the cave.

Bluegrass Underground is taped once a month, and tickets can be purchased at the website, www.bluegrassunderground.com.

Bluegrass Underground shows can be heard on 650 WSM and online at wsmonline.com each Saturday night from 5-6 pm. Bluegrass Underground is also aired on Thunder Radio WMSR-AM in Tullahoma each Saturday at 2 pm.

World-famous Cumberland Caverns is located in the heart of Middle Tennessee, centrally located between Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville. The cave is just off of Highway 8, six miles southeast of McMinnville via US 70-S, between Nashville and Knoxville, or via Highway 55 from I-24 at Manchester, between Nashville and Chattanooga.

The John Cowan Band

Bluegrass, Newgrass, Gospelgrass, Rock N’ Rollgrass…true innovators like John Cowan break boundaries and personify innovation. John’s ability to take audiences on a musical journey through multiple genres has made him one of the most unique vocal artists of his generation.

John Cowan rose to fame when he became the lead singer for New Grass Revival. He and band mates Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn introduced a new generation of music fans to an explosive, experimental brand of bluegrass…Newgrass! However, after inspiring and entertaining fans for nearly two decades, New Grass Revival disbanded in 1990.

On his own, John was free to give his creative muse full rein. He recorded a series of critically acclaimed albums spanning the musical spectrum, often bending and blending genres.

In the early nineties, John joined the Doobie Brothers and lent both his bass and vocal skills to this iconic band on tour. However, after just two short years, John once again felt restless and returned to a solo career that allowed him more expressive freedom. As the 21st century began, John found himself coming full circle, returning to his roots in Newgrass and forming The John Cowan Band. Though the line-up has changed from time to time, John has always surrounded himself with only the finest acoustic musicians. The band’s current line-up features John on bass and lead vocals, Jeff Autry on guitar (acknowledged as one of America’s best flat-pickers), John Frazier on mandolin (a true rising star in the acoustic world), Shad “Lightning” Cobb on fiddle (world renowned for his blazing finger work) and Bryon Larrance on percussion (the newest addition to JCB,allowing for an expanded repertoire).

John comments, “Our music has evolved organically, its rooted in my Newgrass days but I’m also exploring and breaking new ground as well…these guys are very talented and I love playing with ‘em…of course the true measure is the fantastic response we’ve gotten from audiences on tour, we love performing, its food for the soul.”

And, upon further reflection, John adds, “What we did back in the NGR days was unique…we weren’t really playing Bluegrass, we were playing contemporary music on traditional instruments. Our vision was to take acoustic music somewhere new. The John Cowan Band is now recapturing the magic of that ground-breaking experimentation and taking it to the next level, come out and see what I mean, a JCB Jam is something special and we’d love to share it with ya’all!”

The Greencards

The Greencards Photo by David McLister.

You could call it an attraction…a curiosity…an anticipation of surprise and delight. But there’s a better word to describe what the music of The Greencards inspires. Fascination.

If you’ve followed this multinational threesome over these past five years, you know the feeling. From their personal histories through the content of their work, grounded in deep musical tradition but elevated by breathtaking technique and conceptual adventurousness, there is ample reason for interest … for excitement …For Fascination.

Now, with their Sugar Hill Records debut, it’s official. Fascination describes the essence of this band. It was, first of all, their fascination with American roots music – bluegrass especially – that drew singer/bassist Carol Young and multiple string-instrument master Kym Warner from Australia, and violinist/violist Eamon McLoughlin from the U.K., to Austin, Texas, where they began performing together, and later to their current home base in Nashville.

That urge to challenge themselves, to test the limits of any established genre, guided them on their first three albums. It kept them focused as they accumulated awards and acclamations, from the Americana Music Award in 2006 for “Emerging Artist of the Year” through tours with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to last year’s “Best Country Instrumental Performance” Grammy nomination for “Mucky The Duck,” a track from Viridian in 2008.

All of which leads to Fascination, the band’s most daring accomplishment to date. Meticulously crafted arrangements serve as springboards for exhilarating improvisations. Acoustic textures shimmer in the light of Jay Joyce’s innovative production. On a dozen tracks, a dozen vistas open: an urgent urban scene on “The Avenue,” a dreamy shadowland on “Three Four Time,” a fiddle-sweetened reverie on “Outskirts of Blue,” a hallucination, as much silence as substance, equal parts jazz, blues, and Pulp Fiction on “Into the Blue,” a blaze of virtuosity unleashed on “Little Siam,” a mesh of pizzicato pulses on the title track that sounds something like a reggae jam inside a grandfather clock.

Mike Farris and The McCrary Sisters

In 2007, when Mike Farris debuted his critically acclaimed Salvation in Lights, people who’d never heard of the former Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelie’s frontman, music business people and retailers who thought they’d “heard it all and seen it all,” stood with mouths agape, eyes like saucers, aghast at how that sound, that soul, could come from such an unlikely source.

In the two years since Salvation In Lights, Farris’ live performances across the country, including Bonnaroo, SXSW, Austin City Limits Festival, and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, have left music novices, fans and seasoned artists with the same awe-struck response. His live shows, in no small part, led to this music veteran taking home the Americana Music Award in 2008 “New/Emerging Artist of the Year.” Peter Frampton, Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin, Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby, Jackson Browne, Marty Stuart and many other artists have taken note of Farris’ incomparable vocal performance.

Truth be told, that gift, that kind of soul bearing authenticity where the singer becomes one with the song, is the result of a hard-fought fight. Like many of Farris’ own musical heroes, from Son House, Pop Staples, and Mahalia Jackson to Coltrane, Cash and Cooke, to Jimmie Rodgers, Louis Armstrong and the brothers Vaughn (for whom Farris did a stint in Double Trouble) this southern-bred rock-n-soul’er has fought his share of personal demons, emerging from the shadows with a new song.

Only this time around, the song itself is ancient. A marriage of traditional black gospel, 70s Stax soul and southern blues, Farris is even stronger than revealed on his 2003 solo debut, Goodnight Sun. His undeniable voice, his skillful arrangements and perhaps most of all, the joy and passion with which he delivers both, breathe new life into long-forgotten spirituals and vintage-y originals, excavating priceless treasures.

Related Links

Bluegrass Underground
Bluegrass Underground on Twitter
Bluegrass Underground on Facebook
John Cowan Band
The Greencards
Mike Farris & The McCrary Sisters