room with an almost far too cheery wave. This wasn't the usual type of festival she would play so when asked about what Doc had to do to get her to play here she laughed saying he just had to ask. Dolly's last 2 albums have gone back to her mountain roots and show her at her best as a singer and songwriter. Little Sparrow is a collection of songs of love and life and mountain legends. Songs like Mountain Angel as Dolly says "come from stories my mama used to tell us kids to get us to go to bed at night"

I asked Dolly how Altan ended up on the album and she told me that some years before she had recorded an album at her home called Heartsongs and needed an Irish band for the project. Her producer Steve Buckingham knew of Altan and invited them to play on the record. "Since then" she continues, "they have become such good friends and are such sweet people I had to ask them back to play on this one. They were on tour in LA and they came into the studio and did the track." She then went on to say. "I want to do a full Irish album sometime. As you know the music of the Smokey mountains is full of the influences of the Irish and the Scottish and that's where most of our music came from."
That night Dolly took to the stage in front of most of the 70,000 attendance of people who take their Bluegrass music seriously and she blew us all away with a brilliant performance which had people in tears of both laughter and tugged heartstrings. She is currently working on a Television movie of Mountain Angel and a Hollywood comedy due for release next year. She did promise one thing, that she wouldn't stray too far from her acoustic roots and would make another Blue Mountain album in the next year or 2 and I for one will be adding it to my collection.