We're all well aware at this point of all we've been missing—in some cases starving for—during the year-long and counting COVID-19 pandemic. We miss bluegrass festivals, needless to say. Professional touring musicians miss at least some aspects of the road,
Author: Chris Jones
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From The Side of the Road… can you not be in two places at one time?
When COVID relief has been debated in the past year, there has been some concern in congress that the government might be creating an incentive not to work by paying people too much while they're idle. For now we’ll just
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From The Side of the Road: translations from purple publicist prose
If you've attended the IBMA World of Bluegrass and registered for the conference, the organization hereby thanks you for not being a freeloader. No, what I really started to say was that if you've registered for the conference and thereby
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From The Side of the Road… Bluegrass baby name derivation
Chris is stuck working a double shift this morning at SiriusXM, so we are running this encore presentation of one of his best columns. There's a whole industry built around baby names. There are numerous books out listing baby names, their
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From The Side of the Road… can you find the pop lyric in a bluegrass song?
If you've been reading these columns for any length of time, you know that I have periodically lamented the fact that a significant chunk of bluegrass music listeners aren't paying attention to lyrics, and may only be vaguely aware that
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From The Side of the Road… an attempt at metric conversion for bluegrass
Should we consider adopting the metric system for bluegrass songs to broaden the music's appeal? Bluegrass musician Ira Gitlin brought this issue up to me recently, and I think it deserves some thought. This is a question almost no one
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From The Side of the Road… bluegrass song titles from the ’80s!
I was recently reminded of a column I wrote in which we poked fun at Millennials with some alternatives to bluegrass standards, like “I’m a Man of Constant Netflix,” “Selfie On Top of the World,” and “You Don’t Know My
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From The Side of the Road… what turned the nice snake so awful and dreadful?
I've noticed within the entertainment industry a growing interest in the back stories of the villains of some of our legends, fairy tales, and classic superhero stories. Having milked most of the superhero and Grimm's fairy tale-based franchises dry, all
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From The Side of the Road… Mr. Bluegrass Manners’ triumphant return
The pandemic is even taking its toll on Mr. Bluegrass Manners. The last time I saw him, he was playing the Flatt & Scruggs Carnegie Hall album in LP form over and over and just staring at the record as
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From The Side of the Road… what is your bluegrass spirit animal?
In this general feeling of turning a corner, seeing light at the end of the tunnel, and whatever other hopeful clichés, we can attach to the year 2021, we're all at least looking forward. Last week I advocated acquiring some