Personally -- all a matter of taste, naturally -- I think Rhonda Vincent is a splendid singer. The bluegrass audience agrees; in that context, she's a superstar. My problem is with some of her choice of material, by which I mean the country-pop stuff. On the other side, I've heard some moving and memorable performances, e.g., her interpretation of my favorite Hank Williams song, "My Sweet Love Ain't Around."

If you're looking for mountain-style vocalizing among women who sing bluegrass these days (as opposed to folk revivalists such as Anna & Elizabeth trafficking in pure Appalachian balladry), you'll need to look long and hard if you're going beyond Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick, whose style in fact is a smoother, modernist iteration of the original. Much of the younger bluegrass that passes for traditional today is so only in a relative sense. And even that approach is less in the genre mainstream than it was formerly.

This is lamentable to those of us who prefer the old sounds, but as the Percy Mayfield song reminds us, nothing stays the same forever.