Rounder Recording Artist Blue Highway headlines Friday night, June 6, at Sally Gap Bluegrass Festival near Williamsburg, KY.

The Sally Gap Bluegrass Festival returns June 6-8 at Jackson Farm, near Williamsburg, Ky.

Fronting this year’s show are Blue Highway, which will perform on Friday,and the Lonesome River Band, Saturday’s top act.

The festival is sponsored by Jackson Farms and Southern Sun.

The event focuses heavily on children’s activities, with a special workshop, the “American Traditional Music Project,” in which participants will be building their own banjos.

The festival also features the Sally Gap Children’s Band and special classroom teachers workshop, “Utilizing Bluegrass Music in the Classroom,” utilizing the International Bluegrass Music Association’s teaching model. The workshop will be held at the University of the Cumberlands.

Other bands on the play bill are Kentucky Win, Southern Sun, Blue Moon Rising, Blue Storm, and Ron, Vernon,
and Straight Creek, Virgil Bowlin and Peerless Mountain and the Dixie Ryders.

Ticket and camping information is available at http://www.sallygapbgfestival.com.

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The Lonesome River Band is in the final stages of producing a new CD, according to founding member and banjo player Sammy Shelor.

The group recorded tracks from Feb. 4 to Feb 14 at Mountain Fever Studio in Willis, Va.

“Mark Hodges (producer and engineer for the studio) has been great to work with, and the CD is sounding great,” Shelor said on the band’s Web site,. “It is almost all new material with a couple of old favorites thrown in.”

Guitarist and lead singer Brandon Rickman wrote several tunes for the new project, Shelor said. It will also include songs written by Larry Cordle, Dee Gaskin, and Billy Yeates.

The CD will also mark the return of fiddler Mike Hartgrove with the group. Hartgrove had been playing with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver and teaching fiddle.

“Mixing is going on now and we hope to be talking to record companies soon,” Shelor said.

The band’s Web site is www.lonesomeriverband.com

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Mike Hartgrove photo by Steve Shaffer/KET

The Lonesome River Band has musicians coming and going as 2007 rolls into 2008.According to a message from Sammy Shelor on the band’s Web site, LRB’s former fiddle player Mike Hartgrove will rejoin the group in January.

“After a stint with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver and teaching fiddle, Mike will be back on stage with us soon. He is one of the true pros of this business and we are going to enjoy having his great fiddle work back in the band.”Sammy Shelor

Shelor also notes that Matt Leadbetter, the only full time Dobro player LRB has ever had, has left the band “to be with his new son Houston and to work closer to home.”

“Matt did a great job with the band and we wish him well,” Shelor said.

Fans will also be happy to hear that the band will release a new CD “sometime in the spring of 2008,” Shelor said.

The newest CD from LRB on retailers’ shelves came out this summer on the Sugar Hill label. Entitled “Lonesome River Band — Best of The Sugar Hill Years,” it features four songs taken from each of the CDs the band recorded for the label. Those CDs are “Old Country Town,” “One Step Forward,” “Finding the Way” and “Talkin’ to Myself.”

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