Brance, Author at Bluegrass Today

Charlie Louvin in American Spectator

The political magazine, American Spectator, ran a special report yesterday on their website featuring an interview and story about Charlie Louvin.

The story is a nice length and includes a lot of first hand comments directly from Charlie. The history of the brother duo is told, along with a couple interesting childhood stories.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes concerning how the pair learned to sing harmony.

He tells about learning shape-note singing at the local Baptist church — and none of these simple, childlike songs they sing nowadays, written so as not to traumatize five-year-old girls, but creepy close harmony tunes like “Are you Washed in the Blood?” and “Sinner, You’d Better Get Ready.”

I’ve never heard Washed In The Blood referred to as “creepy” before, but that line definitely made me laugh.

Who knew Ira had such a temper?!

If a mandolin string worked itself out of tune Ira would smash the instrument to pieces on stage and stomp on the pieces.

I’d like to attend a bluegrass show and see some of that attitude. It would sure liven up the stage performance and make it entertaining!

New IBMA Board Members

The annual IBMA elections concluded recently with the addition of four new board members.

Only professional members vote in board elections. Elected representatives serve for a period of three years beginning with their installment on September 29, 2008.

Here are the four new board members, the constituency they represent, and a little background info about them.

Carl Jackson, an award-winning artist, songwriter and producer from Gallatin, Tennessee, was elected to represent artists and composers.

Ronnie McCoury, an award-winning artist, producer and member of the Del McCoury Band from Hendersonville, Tennessee was elected as an "at-large" representative for all members.

Cindy Baucom, from Elkin, North Carolina, is an award-winning broadcast personality who hosts the nationally syndicated program "Knee Deep in Bluegrass," was elected to represent the broadcast media.

Craig Havighurst, an award-winning independent journalist, author and producer whose company (String Theory Media) is located in Nashville, Tennessee, was elected by IBMA’s print media and education members.

These new board members join the existing board members (replacing four who previously held these posts) to compose the 17 member policy-making, governing body of the organization.

Doc Watson Health Update

Bluegrass and folk music icon Doc Watson is undergoing micro-surgery today at Duke Hospital in Durham, NC.

Doc is a beloved fixture of this music and his doctors feel his health is very good for his advanced age of 85. Please remember him in your prayers and picking today as he has this surgery.

Jack Lawrence gives us the details.

There is a very small spot in the center lobe of his right lung that will be removed. It has not spread so the prognosis is very good and no radiation or chemo will be required. The micro-surgery is much less invasive than the standard procedure so he should be out of the hospital about three days afer the procedure. He’s in good spirits, but understandably ready to have it over. His GP told the surgeons that he had an 85 year old man with the body of a 50 year old that needed surgery. Of course, Doc loved that! The surgeons agreed and decided that Doc would come through this just fine.

If anyone wishes to send Doc a card or letter of encouragement, please send them to us at the following address and we will forward them to Doc.

Bluegrass Today
P.O. Box 1069
Pulaski, VA 24301

Tom T. Hall enters Country Music Hall of Fame

This past Sunday evening, Tom T. Hall was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, along with the Statler Brothers.

Tom T. has long been associated with bluegrass music. He got his start playing in a bluegrass band. He spent many years as the storyteller of country music, but in more recent years he has been writing songs for various bluegrass artists. He started his own label a few years ago, Good Homegrown Music, to produce and promote bluegrass music.

At Hall’s request, the red carpet saw many bluegrass stars Sunday night. In attendance were: Michelle Nixon, Dailey & Vincent, Heather Berry, Earl Scruggs, Larry Stephenson, Charlie Sizemore, Chris Jones, Alecia Nugent, Roni Stoneman and Judy Marshall.

The director of the Hall of Fame and Museum, Kyle Young, narrated the evening and shared that Hall had once confessed that

…the best music he ever heard and ever played was under a tree with a bluegrass band.

CMT News has the full story with details.

Congratulations to Tom T. Hall, it’s a well deserved honor!

Cracker Barrel’s Rural Roots Music Fest

Bluegrass artists are having an increasingly difficult time finding retail outlets for their recorded works. Wal-mart is all but inaccessable, and the brick and morter record shops are closing faster than a lick from Johnny Butten’s banjo.

Could Cracker Barrel become a viable retail outlet? One group of artists thinks so. Bob Everhart, president of the National Traditional Country Music Association, recently announced an opportunity for upper midewest country and bluegrass artists to place their music for sale in area Cracker Barrel Restaurants.

July 12, 2008 will see the kickoff to Cracker Barrel’s Rural Roots Music Fest. From 10am to 7pm area artists will perform on the front porch of the Crackerbarrel store at the Lake Manawa Shopping Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The 9-hour show is a means of ‘supporting’ the Cracker Barrel’s decision to place local recorded product in-house. The ‘impetus’ of this first-time approach to independent recording artists, from Cracker Barrel’s point of view, is ‘great down-home country food in the dining room,’ and ‘great down-home country music on the front porch.’ This same theme will be hopefully carried through with ‘great down-home music CD’s in the store.’

If successful, this may lead to an expansion of the program to other stores. Cracker Barrel has had an interest in country and bluegrass music for some time, even starting their own label. This program will provide Cracker Barrel with music to sell and no overhead to produce it, and provide a much needed retail outlet for smaller independent groups. It sounds like a win-win situation.

More information is available on the NTCMA website.

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine Digital

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine has entered the digital domain. The magazine has been producing a CD for many years now, to accompany each issue. But now the magazine content itself is being offered in digital form.

Flatpickdigital.com offers subscribers the opportunity to purchase an online subscription to either the print content (magazine), the audio content (CD), or both. The magazine is available for online viewing as jpg images, or as a pdf download. Similarly, the audio CD is available for download in mp3 format. Users may download the entire audio library for an issue, or only the tracks that interest them.

The subscription prices for the digital version are significantly less expensive than the traditional print subscription rates, especially for international subscribers. A single year of the magazine only is $20 online, $24 for the audio, or $42 for both.

If guitar is your thing, take a minute and check out the new Flatpickdigital.com

Fuel and Festival Attendance

In mid April we ran a poll asking our readers if they anticipated attending fewer festivals this season due to rising fuel prices. We had just over 500 readers participate in that poll with 58% saying that they would attend few festivals and 42% saying fuel costs would have no negative impact on their attendance this year.

Now that we’re in the middle of the festival season we thought it would informative to run that poll again, asking if you are, in fact, attending fewer bluegrass events this season.

[poll:9]

Jayme Stone: Africa to Appalachia

Following John’s recent post concerning the upcoming release of Africa To Appalachia, the Los Angeles Times Music Blog conducted an interview with Jayme Stone recently.

The interview was published last Thursday. The primary focus is an exploration of the connections between American banjo/folk music and traditional African folk music.

An aspect of the interview I found particularly interesting is the discussion of how traditional African folk music is beginning to disappear due to the influence of more contemporary music forms.

…everyone wants to play electric guitar or drums and listen to rap. Those who have access to those things get affected by it. Sometimes the pop music that makes it over there is the more commercial, less musical stuff, and a lot of tradition is being lost. I met a 70-year-old elder musician in one village who put his hand on my heart and said, "The work you’re doing is so important, and young people aren’t doing it."

Sounds very similar to sentiments I’ve heard expressed right here in the south-eastern US concerning the current state of bluegrass music in America. Small world…

Bluegrass Today Wordled

If you’ve been reading blogs for any amount of time, you’ve probably seen a “Tag Cloud” on one of them. A Tag Cloud takes all the tags used on the blog and generates a visual representation of those tags, more frequently used tags appearing in larger font sizes.

That’s only tags though. This morning I discovered a website called Wordle where you can enter any text you want and it will create something similar for the words you entered. Out of curiosity, I entered the text for the first and second pages of the blog archive, the 40 latest posts. Click the thumbnail to view it full size. This is a wordle, a visual representation of the most frequently used words in our last 40 posts.

If you’ve ever wondered what we post about the most, here’s your answer.

Keith Whitley with Ralph Stanley

Last night my wife and I were talking about my former life as a crew member for country singer Lorrie Morgan. I don’t know how we got on the topic, but the conversation naturally turned to a discussion of Keith Whitley.

We ended up on YouTube watching Whitley videos. I happened across this one of Keith playing with Ralph Stanley and thought I’d share it here. Keith is singing I Hear A Choo Choo Comin’ in this video. I believe this was taped sometime around 1977, but I’m not sure what this taping was a part of. Besides Keith and Ralph, there are some other notable bluegrass figures on stage who were, at the time, members of Ralph’s band, The Clinch Mountain Boys.

For some reason they have disabled embedding on this particular video, so you’ll have to watch it directly on the YoutTube site.