I'll admit that I occasionally watch Hallmark Christmas movies, or parts of them, mainly because I want to see how they'll choose to retell the "single father/architect meets event planner at Christmas when they're both accidentally booked at the same
Author: Chris Jones
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From The Side of the Road… Christmas fun with predictive text
I'll admit to being a stickler for correct lyrics, probably to an annoying degree. Or at least I'm that way about lyrics for which there's a known author. For songs that made their way across the Atlantic in the 19th
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Dealing with the perennial dearth of Christmas bluegrass songs
It was my birthday this week, plus I've been tied up every day with daily fill-in shows on SiriusXM's classic country channel, Willie's Roadhouse. For that reason we have an "encore presentation" today, which as I've explained before is just
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From The Side of the Road… a short work of bluegrass fiction
After writing 400 or so of these, I find that I occasionally tire of all the truth-telling (with the occasional lie thrown in just for fun, or do I have that ratio reversed?). If you wouldn't mind indulging me, then
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From The Side of the Road… gift ideas for your favorite grassers
It's time for our annual review of the best new bluegrass music products introduced in the past year. Well it used to be annual, but then the pandemic hit and we had to put this off for a couple of
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From The Side of the Road… can there be positive bluegrass?
In many parts of our society, we place a high value on being positive. "Just stay positive," we're often told, even if we've just received the news that we have three months to live. Some countries are more positive than others,
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From The Side of the Road… the dreaded pronoun swap returns
A couple of years ago—and given the pandemic time warp we've all experienced, that could be anywhere from one to eight years—I wrote a column about pronoun switches. The idea was inspired by Pete Wernick, who thought there were several
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From The Side of the Road… spooky songs for bluegrass gatherings
I've discussed in past columns the fact that, while bluegrass bands still get booked at weddings, there are at most three appropriate bluegrass songs to play at a wedding. Even some of the instrumentals are questionable, at least if you
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From The Side of the Road… I bet you don’t remember me
I want to describe a scene at a typical bluegrass concert or festival that will probably be familiar to both artist and fan, and it may cause each to shudder just a little: A fan walks up to a performer while
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From The Side of the Road… there’s a day for that!
We're constantly trying to find new and more effective ways to market bluegrass music to a wider audience, or just a less narrow audience, if you want to look at it that way. I've recently returned from the IBMA World