Bluegrass Nights feat. Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder w/The Whites

Ricky Skaggs is hot, hot, hot these days, with three current releases: Honoring The Fathers Of Bluegrass serves up faithful recreations of the earliest entries in canon, Best Of The Sugar Hill Years anthologizes late ‘70s selections and The High Notes—a Cracker Barrel restaurants exclusive—offers bluegrass reworkings of Skaggs’ country hits (an ironic move given that some of the tunes were actually country reworkings of bluegrass hits). It’s all good stuff, and the new recordings show a band—and a frontman—at the peak of their powers. Indeed, as lauded as he is, Skaggs still qualifies as under-rated: He’s one of the most important figures in the last quarter century of bluegrass and country music. Joining him on this show are the always-entertaining, thoroughly-lovable Whites, with whom he earned a recent country/bluegrass/southern gospel Grammy for the delicious Salt Of The Earth.
Thu., July 24, 7:30 p.m., 2008