Our recently released album, Friends of Old Time Music, has been picked as among the best box sets of the year by the New York Times, the New Yorker, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, and many other major publications. Here are some review quotes:

The New York Times:
"A tiny, scholarly outfit called Friends of Old Time Music put on a series of concerts in the early '60s at high-school and college auditoriums in Greenwich Village; a man named Peter Siegel recorded the shows with a fairly cheap microphone; and this, at last, is the result, a boxed set of awesome and concentrated power, demonstrating exactly the lure of the particular American musical traditions that got deep into a generation of musicians like the young Bob Dylan. (The first F.O.T.M. concert occurred a month after his arrival here, and many of the concert performers were among the mysterious characters assembled on one of his treasured possessions, Harry Smith's 'Anthology of American Folk Music.') Here is the scarily intense Kentucky-mountain tenor Roscoe Holcomb, the blues-influenced white singer Dock Boggs, the elegant ensemble workings of the bluegrass bands led by Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers and the purring euphony of Mississippi John Hurt; also, some of the revivalists' own bands, including the New Lost Ramblers and the Greenbriar Boys. With strong, clear sound, it makes you understand what the fuss was all about."   —  Ben Ratliff

The Boston Globe:
"These archival concert tracks of masters such as Mississippi John Hurt, the Stanley Brothers, and Bill Monroe form a precious, wildly beautiful document_"    —  Scott Alarik

New York Daily News:
"A magnificent collection of 55 live recordings by "rediscovered" singers like Mississippi John Hurt and geniuses like Bill Monroe and Maybelle Carter. This isn't just about preserving history, though it does that. It's about the way great living music goes on."    —  David Hinckley

fROOTS (UK):

"From the opening tracks of this set, we are witnesses to a Golden Age. Current talk of a 'folk revival' can seem like a hollow boast: where are the masters of traditional forms to join the young enthusiasts on stage today? We have to look to the 'world music' field for rare moments of revelation like these.

"What might seem a curious choice -- mixing black country blues willy-nilly with Appalachian mountain music -- works beautifully... The unified atmosphere of these performances is aided by the exquisite production. Applause from one track fades gently into the opening bars of the next, as if we are listening to three seamless concerts. This sort of effect is easier to achieve with the modern digital equipment to hand, but producer Peter Siegel has done a terrific job maintaining the warmth of his own original recordings in the treacherous transfer out of the analogue domain.

"Highlights? There are so many, from the Stanley Brothers and Doc Watson to some of the best performances by Jesse Fuller I've ever heard... There are 55 tracks here and not a dud among them. The excitement of performers and audiences discovering one another is palpable. Nothing post-modern here, just the unalloyed joy of listening to the virtuosi that rural cultures used to produce by the hundreds in the days before they started imitating themselves." —  Joe Boyd

San Francisco Chronicle:
"An exciting three-disc collection that contains the palpable thrill of the culture clash of bringing backwoods music to the big city."   —  Joel Selvin

The Steve Earle Show (Air America Radio):
"This is a really cool box set. I suggest that you go out and get it."    — Steve Earle

No Depression:
"…possibly the best recordings ever by such disparate characters as Dock Boggs, Jesse Fuller, and Maybelle Carter. As the collection's subtitle implies, the folk revival starts here."   — Ed Ward

In The Groove:
"It was through the genius of Peter Siegel, who arranged the sound for the concerts and recorded all of them on reels of tape, that complete sound records of the performances – the first trip North for many of the artists after 25 years – are available for researchers.  Better still is the fact that Smithsonian Folkways has just issued a fabulous three-disc box set – Friends of Old Time Music… The sound is superb and the 50 page long-form liner note booklet is informative… Highly recommended."  — Steve Ramm