• Sunnyflower One – Miss Dixie sings

    You’re never too old or experienced to have your career take off in a new direction. Miss Dixie Hall, the renowned and award-winning songwriter in bluegrass music, has recorded her first-ever song as a vocalist, and it’s being released this week.

  • Pouco Bessie with guava nectar

    The Night Drivers and I have just completed what I believe is the world’s second shortest European tour. The world’s shortest European tour involved a band that just took their instruments out at the baggage claim of Amsterdam Schipol airport,

  • 6 weeks in Myanmar, and other folk tales

    I’m in Scotland at the moment, and I’m taking a couple of Wednesdays off to clear my head and think of new jokes involving banjos, haggis, and curling. Meanwhile, though, during a recent seminar at the IBMA World of Bluegrass on

  • So I said to Alison…

    I addressed the issue of name-dropping early on in the life of this column. Bela said he was pretty happy with it, so I felt no need to follow up. Dan and Suzanne had also given it their stamp of

  • Hyperbanjoization and PIBMAWOBWOBFS

    This is going to be brief, as I’m still in the throes of post-IBMA-World-of-Bluegrass/Wide-Open-Bluegrass fatigue syndrome (PIBMAWOBWOBFS, or “Pib-ma-wob-wob-fus”). I hid away for three days, eating nothing but buckwheat pancakes and ramen noodles (not together), watching baseball, and listening to

  • IBMA journal – ying or yang

    This is midweek of the IBMA World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, NC. I’m enjoying the week, possibly because my really hard day doesn’t come until Thursday, when I’ll be participating in a morning seminar (“Yoga on a moving bus: healthy

  • Meet the Rob Ickes of rice

    My very first column for Bluegrass Today was written right before the IBMA World of Bluegrass of 2011, held in Nashville. It contained some recommendations for maintaining your health during what can be a very stressful week. I would write something

  • The Bluegrass name game

    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