The varieties and traditions of music in Ireland run long and deep. Musicians who draw on the heritage and history of music in Ireland for their ideas find as many different ways to take those things forward as they do to connect them with the past.

"We are in a unique location, and you have to have a pioneering spirit to make it all the way up to the festival if you don't have ties here," says Caroline MacLennan, festival director of the Hebridean Celtic Festival -- Fèis Cheilteach Innse Gall in Scotttish Gaelic. The place she's speaking of is the Isle of Lewis, the northernmost island of the Western Isles, some forty miles off the north west coast of Scotland.

Little House on the Prairie: even if you’ve never been to the American midwest, these words bring up images -- images which seem like memories, really -- of life at the edge of pioneer times in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas a century and a half ago.

Whether you make it for a living or listen for fun -- or both -- music is a central part of the winter holiday season. Listen in as those whose music you enjoy offer ideas about music they like to hear or play this time of year.

Winner of two World Music Awards, 'Cielo Nocturno' by renowned guitarist Russ Hewitt is a work of art. The Grammys? They know what they're doing by putting it on the ballot in three categories. Hewitt, now on his third album, is constantly growing, traveling, writing...and impressing listeners. His work is new to me, but one listen to Cielo Nocturno and I was hooked. When I interviewed him, I became even more of a fan.

You have to love a band that starts one of their songs with Spongebob lyrics...

Indeed, we loved the band of brothers, AJR, before we saw them perform live this weekend. But after seeing them in concert? Well, they blew us away with their energy, creative songs, personality, and musicianship.