Five months into the pandemic and many bluegrass musicians have settled into one of two categories: the hustlers and the layabouts. The hustlers are busy producing instructional material, hosting livestream concerts, making sure to leave some spare time to renovate the
Author: Chris Jones
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From The Side of the Road… catty Yelp reviews of bluegrass classics
Do you read online customer reviews before going to restaurants or staying at hotels (back when we did that sort of thing)? As you may have discovered, it’s best to judge based on several reviews, looking at the average impressions
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From The Side Of The Road… rejected WOB seminar topics
Let this serve as a friendly reminder that the deadline for submitting IBMA Business Conference session proposals is this Friday, July 31st at 5:00 p.m. central. This is a great opportunity to help come up with new and interesting topics
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From the Side of the Road… annual quiz time
I’m back after a skillfully negotiated three weeks off, following my 400th column. My hope is that you hadn’t actually noticed and that the reruns seemed exactly as fresh as the first time they ran (which may range from moderately
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Something to be worried about, or breaking up is hard to do
The following is an encore presentation. I thought since just about every bluegrass band in the world is on hiatus right now, I thought it might be a good time to revisit the subject of going on hiatus vs. breaking
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Jimmy Martin songs about Europe, and other radio show themes
I have tended to shy away from themes in my radio work. With the classic bluegrass show I do for SiriusXM called Truegrass, I’ll occasionally do tributes to some of the bluegrass greats in honor of a special occasion like
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Can you spot the pop lyric in a bluegrass song?
I’m taking a few weeks off in celebration of column #400, so the following is “an encore presentation.” Note that this was one that was written shortly after the death of Pete Goble. Just a reminder: we’re still soliciting names
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The big 4-0-0: A major bluegrass milestone
It’s hard for me to believe, but this is my 400th column for Bluegrass Today. I had assumed I’d be out of ideas by about number 12 or so, and perhaps I was, but I guess this is a testament
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Q&A – attending a Virtual Wold of Bluegrass
Well, if you’ve checked your email, yesterday’s Bluegrass Today stories, or just talked to one of your perpetually in-the-know friends (that third one is usually the least reliable of these sources), you’ve already heard that the IBMA World of Bluegrass
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The least interesting bluegrass stories of 2020
Every year I do my best to compile what I believe to be the year’s most uninteresting developments in the bluegrass music world. Sometimes this requires a little digging, as there are some surprisingly captivating stories in our music over