Bluegrass for Lunch radio show is no more

The host of the Rockingham County Radio’s Wednesday Bluegrass for Lunch program, Bob Webster, has contacted us to share the disappointing news that today’s March 28 show would be the last.

IBMA Board Member Webster started the program in May 2015, airing each Wednesday from 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m. on W1490 WLOE in Eden, North Carolina, and 1420 WMYN, Mayodan, North Carolina, and streaming live on www.RCR24.com 

Bluegrass for Lunch featured an hour of Gospel music, two hours of traditional and new bluegrass, plus timely interviews with today’s top musicians. 

The last two hours have also been re-broadcast on Thursdays from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon on www.BluegrassCountry.org. Podcasts have also been available on the Rockingham County Radio website.  

Webster, who has been a bluegrass fan since the days of the Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’ TV show that he watched while growing up in his native North Carolina, stated that, “recent budget reviews at the station have resulted in this program no longer being financially sustainable.” He went on to say though, “podcasts should remain available for a few months.”

He continues his involvement in bluegrass matters through MC work, being scheduled to play a part in Doyle Lawson’s Festival in May.  

Recently, Webster was emcee for the landmark 70th anniversary of the Sandy Ridge Elementary School Bluegrass Show in Sandy Ridge, North Carolina, on March 17, 2018.  (Jay Adams, banjo player with Rich in Tradition and the Churchmen, is keeping alive a show that began when Mac Wiseman did the first booking of Flatt & Scruggs there in 1948.)

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About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.