Do you have a big wedding anniversary coming up? When we celebrated our 30th, I decided to consult the list of year or milestone-appropriate gifts as a guide for my gift (the 60th anniversary gift, by the way, is an
Chris Jones
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From The Side of the Road… the missing ingredient in bluegrass songs
I don't know if you’re familiar with the song made popular by Dobie Gray in 1973 called Drift Away, but it's a song that's had enduring appeal. I personally have always been a huge fan of the Dobie Gray version.
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From The Side of the Road… find your bluegrass stage name
Do you ever play the name games? I'm referring to the cute methods of generating your own alternate name for a specific occupation. For example, you can arrive at your stage name by combining your middle name with the name
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From The Side of the Road… crowd-funding for the contemporary bluegrass artist
We're all adjusting to a world in which recordings and other music projects are being funded in new ways. Even established artists recording for established record labels are now using fan-driven funding campaigns to finance their work. This can either
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From The Side of the Road… a look back at COVID restriction song ideas
This Valentine's Day, you might have the opportunity to take the one you love (or at least the one you don't mind too much) out to dinner, or to a movie. In other words, you might actually be going out somewhere
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From The Side of the Road… Mr. Bluegrass Manners looks at 2024
Mr. Bluegrass Manners has been away from us for a while. He hasn't been idle, however. He's been doing research for an upcoming book with the working title, Why You Gotta Be So Rude? He also recently spoke at an
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From The Side of the Road… bluegrass fears, real and imagined
You may think of people who have chosen bluegrass music as a profession as fearless types who proceed boldly into the future without a care for their material comfort, or family and financial stability. Perhaps you're correct about the financial
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From The Side of the Road… bad bluegrass business concepts
Today is a travel day for me as I hop a dog sled to a freight train to another dog sled to a plane to a rental car, eventually to Nashville during SPBGMA weekend. For that reason I offer up
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From The Side of the Road… go on, tell the truth!
We're into the cold and dark part of the year, which goes along with the quiet part of the touring season. Since it's also a time of reflecting back on the previous business year, I wanted to open on a
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From The Side off the Road… warning labels for bluegrass songs
Someone recently suggested to me that bluegrass music is every bit as violent as uncensored hip hop, especially towards women, and that bluegrass recordings should have parental warning stickers on them. I replied that I thought that was ridiculous. How