Miscellaneous bluegrass news

If you've ever wondered what you should be practicing, Juergen Reiter (a composer, bassist, producer from Germany), offers some advice over at the Music Think Tank. His advice? Limit what you practice. He says the advice young musicians are given to practice

Banjo fanatics have long been recognized as one part tinkerer and one part alchemist. They obsess over minor variations in the exact mix of metals in banjo components, and fret about differences of a few thousandths of an inch in

When the complete list of nominees for the 2009 Academy Of Country Music Awards were announced yesterday (2/11), a number of bluegrass pickers showed up on the list. No... not that list (the one with all the Nashville glitterati in their

We told you a few weeks ago about the Marathon Jam scheduled for January 31 to benefit Fisher House, an organization that provides housing for families of wounded American servicemen and women receiving treatment at military hospitals. The jam was scheduled

Curly Seckler will be honored at the 13th Annual Leon Kiser Memorial Tribute Show to take place at the Paramount Centre for the Arts in Bristol, Tennessee, on February 28. Seckler will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, Musician Category, for

Yesterday's (2 /9) Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album went to Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder for Honoring The Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947. Congratulations to Ricky and the boys! Alison Krauss and Robert Plant won 5 Grammies for

Nashville radio station WKDF is reporting that former Led Zeppelin vocalist and current Alison Krauss duet partner Robert Plant has rented a home in Nashville and is working on a follow-up with Krauss to their hugely successful Raising Sand CD. The

The Country Music Association has announced its nominees for induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009. Roy Clark has been named as one of those inductees. Clark will be inducted into the category of Career Achieved National Prominence

Continuing in their quest to prove that the familiar bluegrass ensemble (banjo, bass, fiddle, guitar, mandolin) is primarily a group of musical instruments - as opposed to bluegrass instruments - Punch Brothers are hard at work on a transcription of 

Valerie Smith and her musical crew are back home after a fun-filled Bell Buckle Music Cruise of the Caribbean on the Carnival Inspiration. Back on solid ground, she and her band, Liberty Pike are in Nashville for a show tonight (1/31)