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
Author: Chris Jones
-
-
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
-
From The Side of the Road… annual Bluegrass Quiz for 2024!
Happy New Year, friends and readers! 2024 is here at last. It's one of those special every four years in the cycle leap years: you know, the ones with the extra day in February, the summer Olympics, and a US
-
From The Side of the Road… New Year’s Rulin’s for 2024
Peter Thompson, noted California bluegrass DJ and former concert organizer, recently e-mailed out a copy of Woody Guthrie's New Years resolutions from 1942, which Woody called "New Years Rulin's." It was a long list, with 33 items on it, and had
-
From The Side of the Road… bluegrass bandleader gift ideas
This is it: the home stretch of the holiday shopping season is upon us. If you're reading this when it first hit the Bluegrass Today front page on Wednesday (morning edition), there are five more shopping days until Christmas, counting
-
From The Side of the Road… Mary and Joseph
Bluegrass bands face an annual challenge at this festive time of the year. And no, I don't mean the challenge of coming up with money to buy gifts when your band isn't working at all. Though it is a traditional time
-
From The Side of the Road… another dose of bluegrass Hallmark Christmas movies
It's that time of year again: time for the annual Hallmark barrage of Christmas movies. In fact, it's been that time of year since October. By the time we hit the fourth Sunday in Advent, Hallmark will have fixed up
-
From The Side of the Road… bluegrass records that really count
Whatever the future makeup of the IBMA Board of Directors might be in an ideal world (heaven), whether it have 16 members or 5 members, whether it be human, or run by AI bots who play a little banjo on
-
From The Side of the Road… happy turkey day!
This being the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you would naturally be expecting a Thanksgiving-y column, perhaps a list of bluegrass things to be thankful for, e.g. "I'm thankful for my Blue Chip TPR 45," or "I'm thankful for Jimmy Martin's lead
-
From The Side of the Road… bluegrass bandleader apps
One of the most important cliche phrases of the current decade, aside from "drink the Kool-aid," "going forward," and, from the world of television news: "at the end of the day," is "there's an app for that." We now have