Steve's Online Brain Dump

The Ty Curtis Band

Chalk up one more point in the “bands I’ve discovered through satellite radio” list. While out passing the many miles under the tires over my recent Christmas travels, I had the dial set to Sirius 74 “B.B. King’s Bluesville.” This channel easily earns its spot in one of six presets on my radio; the latest reason being the subject of this post. While passing mile number something-something hundred (somewhere between here and We’ve Been Driving Too Damn Long, FL), a rockin’ tune started snapping me out of the monotonous counting of roadway dash markings. Standard procedure for when something like this happens is to document the artist name and song title to look up later on. Being the model of driver safety that I am, I had the wife reluctantly wake up and shoot me an email (gotta love the digitally tethered age we live in, sometimes) with the simple blurb: Ty Curtis Band – Do I Love You Too Much.

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Kristin Scott Benson--Second Season

While listening to Bluegrass Junction on Sirius a few weeks ago, I heard an excellent instrumental that I committed to memory and set out to find on CD. The tune was called “Trying Times” and is the work of Kristin Scott Benson. After sampling the rest of the songs on her latest album called “Second Season,” I made the $9.99 plunge and bought an MP3 version from Amazon.com. I’m not going to give a track-by-track review of the album since there is an over-abundance of other places on the interwebs to find that, but I will most certainly give it a five-star-two-thumbs-up-10-out-of-10-go-buy-it-now rating! Some instrumentals and some traditional songs, all of ‘em show off her remarkable banjo work.

It’s albums like these–crystal clear recordings, superb instrument work on all fronts, catchy riffs, and no filler material–that keep fueling my bluegrass desire. Dare I even say, they make me want to pick up playing it!