The 2000s were an interesting decade for bluegrass. Riding high off the genre’s revival in the late 1990s and early 2000s from Dolly Parton’s The Grass Is Blue and the Coen Brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou, artists in this decade looked back at bluegrass’s past more than ever. Now in its second century, bluegrass had matured and many of its founders had passed away, prompting artists to ask what the future of the now sixty year-old genre would look like. This all meant that the 2000s were a great decade for bluegrass: bands that had been honing their craft since the early 1990s, like Blue Highway and the Gibson Brothers, cut some of their best albums in this decade. Simultaneously, a crop of new bands like Newfound Road and Balsam Range continued to refine the genre and raise the bar for instrumental and vocal greatness expected of modern bluegrassers. Enjoy this playlist of the best bluegrass from the 2000s!
