One of our favorite places to visit is the "Lone Star State" and we had a wonderful opportunity to do just that when we made an appearance at Bluegrass On Ballard in Wylie, Texas for a show co-produced by the City of Wylie and the Bluegrass Heritage Foundation, founded by our good friend Alan Tompkins. Alan and the BHF do wonderful work and promote music education, encouraging young players to learn and grow in bluegrass music. Thanks to our good friends at Janet Davis Acoustic Music, we were able to make a surprise presentation of a new Recording King 5-string resonator banjo for use in the Play It Forward! Instrument Lending Program. Our hope is that a future banjo superstar might get his or her start on the donated Recording King banjo. 

JMRR are celebrating another #1 song with "The Last Parade" on the Singing News Bluegrass Top 10 for July. Written by Steve Bonafel and based on a true story, "The Last Parade" is featured on the band's latest Rebel Records release, Another Day from Life. The song has been well received by both radio programmers and fans alike, and afforded JMRR the opportunity to make a donation of $3000 last November to the Patriot Guard Riders™ through the digital download of the song. Another Day from Life continues to climb the charts and is #11 on the National Bluegrass Survey's Top 15 Albums with the title track coming in at #15 on the Top 30 Songs chart for July. 

Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers have been selected to represent Bluegrass music at the 75th National Folk Festival to be held in Greensboro, NC in September. The National Folk Festival announced last week that for its 75th anniversary, the Festival will feature 300 artists on seven stages in downtown Greensboro from September 11 – 13, 2015. The three-day Festival is FREE to the public with an expected attendance of over 100,000. First presented in 1934, the National Folk Festival is the nation’s oldest and longest-running multicultural traditional arts festival and has been produced by the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA), since the beginning. The National Folk Festival is a traveling event hosted by a community for three years before moving to a new location. The National’s stay has seeded legacy festivals (all free) in many former host communities including: the Lowell Folk Festival, the Great Lakes Folk Festival (E. Lansing, MI), the American Folk Festival (Bangor, ME), the Richmond Folk Festival, the Montana Folk Festival (Butte), and more.