Brance, Author at Bluegrass Today

Sam Bush on the Opry

For the first time Sam Bush will appeared on the Grand Ole Opry under his own band name. He has played the Opry stage many times as a side man for various artists and still recalls his first appearance. The Nashville City Paper has the story:

he was 17 years old when he made his first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, something Bush still remembers quite well.

“Mr. Acuff came up to my father and told him to get my fiddle out of the car,” Bush said. “He told him but didn’t tell me that I would be going on that night, which is good, because there’s no way I would have ever made it through. Then he gave up one of his own songs so I could play. That was a night I’ll never forget.”

The article states that tonight (7/22) is the night Sam appears on the Opry. But the Opry’s website tells a different story. There it says he is playing tomorrow night. My instinct is to trust the Opry’s schedule, but it would be worth a call before you make plans to attend.

IBMA Awards Candidates – Ballot 2

I’ve compiled a list of links to the candidates from ballot 2 of the 2005 IBMA awards ballots. This list is not exhaustive (though it was exhausting to put together). It includes all candidates I could find a link for quickly, except the individual vocal and instrumental performers. I may do that list another day, but for now have fun. Don’t forget to check the “Open off-site links in new window?” checkbox in the sidebar. That way the links will open in a new window and you won’t lose your place here. Click the “more” link to see the links.

Blogging in the news.

U.S. News and World Report has an interesting article online from their current issue. While focused mainly on corporate blogs, we felt some of the content might be of interest to the bluegrass community. Here are a couple of excerpts.

While discussing who reads blogs. ~

Only 27 percent of Internet users read blogs (and only 38 percent of Internet users even know what a blog is), according to a 2004 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But based on comments posted to their blogs, most executive bloggers conclude their audience is a mix of industry insiders–customers, industry analysts, journalists, employees, and competitors.

Taken in context of how quickly the internet disseminates information, I tend to think these numbers might be a little “last year.” The girth of the blogosphere seems to have widened considerably in the last year or two. What they didn’t say in this article is that the same Pew poll found that:

blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users;

This jump occurred between February and November, and comprised 32 million U.S. citizens in 2004. What might it be by the end of 2005?

The last part of that original quote would indicate that blog readership varies greatly. What this means for you and I is that anyone with an interest in bluegrass music will find Bluegrass Today to be a valuable resourse.

One of the things we hope to accomplish with Bluegrass Today is to create an authoritative source for bluegrass music news and information. Looking once again at the original article I mentioned:

Promoting a new sense of openness–whether with employees, customers, or the public–is one of the most important things that blogs can accomplish in this age of mistrust.

Our hope is that we can all work together as a community to promote this music we love, and we feel that Bluegrass Today can become a great asset to the industry.

Introductory Table Of Contents

If you are new to Bluegrass Today, or blogging in general, here is a table of contents for the introductory articles on this site. These articles explain the concept of “blogging” and the purpose of this site. Each link will take you to the page for that article.

Coming Soon

Welcome to Bluegrass Today. A central clearinghouse for bluegrass news and information of interest to anyone who follows bluegrass music. We are still working on the site design and layout, but hope to launch very soon. We’ll start with a series of articles about what blogging is, and how it can benefit bluegrass music. We’re excited and have some great ideas about things to come. We hope Bluegrass Today will become part of your daily routine of internet news gathering. We’ll see ya soon!

What is a blog?

For those unfamiliar with the term, the word “blog” is a contraction of its original name, “web log.” A blog might best be described as a web-based publication consisting of a number of posts, with new posts added on a regular basis. Each post is generally a brief article written by the author(s) of the blog, or perhaps another contributor. Articles are generally presented in reverse chronological order with the newest entry residing at the top of the page. Like a typical web site, a blog can include text, images or multimedia content, and quite commonly will feature elements of all three, though text predominates.

There are as many types of blogs as there are individual interests, ranging in scope from a personal journal or travel diary to blogs that discuss more universal political, religious or social concerns. Others may attract readers interested in legal, medical or other professional matters while others still may focus on corporate or business issues. Many of the most popular blogs cover news, information and opinion – from every conceivable slice of the political spectrum.

A blog may be authored by an individual, or it may be a collaborate effort of a group of authors and contributors. Some blogs allow visitors to leave comments that remain attached to a post. This creates a ‘community’ of readers and participants. While these comments are often allowed, they are almost always moderated as a blog is not intended to be a bulletin board or forum. Moderating the comments allows the blog’s author to keep the site focused. The comments are usually included as a footnote that requires you click a link to access them. In this way those interested in the comments can readily view them, while others who would rather focus on the information presented in the article are not encumbered by the comments.

Many blogs, especially those which focus primarily on news, link to stories and articles on other blogs or web sites. Taken as a whole this community of blogs and blog-related sites is often refered to as the “blogosphere.” In many ways, blogs and blogging represent a new growth trend on the Internet, and many observers expect it to grow exponentially in the near term, noting that some popular blogs generate between 200,000-500,000 vists daily.

How you can contribute.

You may be wondering how you can take advantage of Bluegrass Today to publish your news item, press release, radio update, etc. Well, it couldn’t be easier. Just use the form below and send us your content. We will review all submissions and if we decide it is of interest to our readership, we will publish it. We will, of course, reference you as the contributor who supplied the content and include a link to your site if you have one. Those who contribute on a regular basis may be contacted and given a special email address where information can be sent, thus simplifying the contribution process.

Who are we?

Bluegrass Today is authored by John Lawless and Brance Gillihan (detailed bios below). While maintaining no pretense about journalistic credentials, the authors’ many years of experience in, and intimate familiarity with the bluegrass music industry on multiple levels makes them well suited to manage and edit this site.

We will, as the opportunity arises, include content provided by persons other than the blog’s primary authors. These outside contributors will be ones we trust to provide reliable, verifiable content in a responsible way.

Guest Contributions will be published folks inside the industry have something of interest to share, but will not be regular authors in the same sense as John and Brance. We will also consider contributions from our readers. During times such as the IBMA World of Bluegrass, these outside contributors will be of great help in keeping up with all that happens that week.

John Lawless

Born and raised in Norfolk, VA, John Lawless now lives in Roanoke where he manages AcuTab Publications, a business dedicated to producing high quality instructional materials for serious students of bluegrass instruments. From it’s humble beginnings as a true “spare bedroom” endeavor AcuTab has since earned a reputation for publishing the very finest transcriptions books and DVD instructional presentations in the bluegrass field. Though AcuTab started by publishing tab books for banjo, they have since moved into books, videos and DVDs for guitar, mandolin and dobro as well.

John is personally featured in two banjo video/DVD releases from AcuTab and was “instrumental” in the production of Knee Deep In Bluegrass, a CD featuring the many artists whose work has been the subject of AcuTab releases, and which was voted as the Instrumental Album Of The Year for 2001 by the International Bluegrass Music Association. He is also the producer of the second Huber Banjos CD, Cuppa ‘Jo.

In recent years, as a full time staff at AcuTab has afforded more time to pursue his music, John has been performing and recording more actively. He has been a featured member of the Roanoke-based band Acoustic Endeavors since 2000, and can be heard on their two critically-acclaimed, but narrowly-distributed CDs, Coming Of Age… again and Sneak Preview. He is also featured on the popular Team Flathead CD from Huber Banjos, and his own recent solo CD project, Five & Dime on Copper Creek Records which features his original banjo compositions.

John is featured in a cover story in the May 2004 issue of Banjo NewsLetter, the premier publication for players and fans of the five string banjo. Written by Bill Evans, a noted banjo player as well as historian and ethnomusicologist, the article includes a wide-ranging interview with John about his music and his success both with AcuTab, and as the director of marketing for Huber Banjos from the time the line was launched in 2001 until Huber elected to bring sales and marketing “in house” in September of 2005. John and AcuTab have been profiled in the past in both Bluegrass Unlimited and Bluegrass Now magazines, and John has contributed a number of articles to prominent bluegrass publications as an author, including Bluegrass Unlimited, Banjo NewsLetter and 5 String Quarterly.

Brance Gillihan

Growing up in Missouri Brance listened to some bluegrass and old-time, but didn’t really discover the music until he heard a bluegrass radio show broadcasting from Tulsa, OK. Shortly after falling in love with the music he quit his job and moved to Levelland, TX. There Brance attended the bluegrass music program at South Plains College. While he was there Brance discovered the recording studio, switched majors and studied sound technology and video production. Leaving Texas, he moved to Nashville, TN where he worked on the road in Lori Morgan’s crew. But what he really wanted to do was run his own studio. In the summer of 2000 Brance moved from Nashville to Pulaski, VA to start Clear Blue Productions.

Clear Blue Productions has now grown to be the studio of choice for bluegrass video and DVD production handling the production of projects that have been released by Rebel Records, Mel Bay, Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, AcuTab Publications, and Texas Music and Video. In addition to DVD production Brance has also engineered a lot of great bluegrass audio recordings, including projects by: Huber Banjos, LED39, David Grier, Tim Stafford, Larry Keel, Alan Munde, Billy Joe Foster, and FGM Records.

In spite of his busy schedule in the studio Brance makes time to play as well. He fronts his own band LED39 which has one CD available and a new gospel project in the works. LED39 doesn’t perform much, but when they do you never know who might show up to play with Brance, but you do know it will be good.