Acoustic Guitar Magazine | 6 years ago
This electro-pop artist is steeped in bluegrass. Who knew? Dillon Hodges is a popular singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose recent album firekid (Atlantic) is the vanguard of a stealth campaign to bring bluegrass music to the masses. The soft-spoken, 25-year-old native of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, who sometimes creates music on his Gameboy, recently stopped by the AG office in Point Richmond, California, without his firekid band, to tape an Acoustic Guitar Session, playing solo acoustic with a Gibson J-45 in hand. He flatpicked his way through three original pop songs, while displaying an impressive command of bluegrass and even jazz. That bluegrass connection is not incidental: in 2007, at age 17, Hodges became the second youngest person to win the prestigious National Flatpicking Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas.
