Miscellaneous bluegrass news

IBMA is closely monitoring the coronavirus outbreak but isn’t taking action just yet related to the 2020 World of Bluegrass celebration in Raleigh this fall. “As of right now, there are no plans to cancel” the conference, IBMA said in a

The South Carolina Arts Commission and the and the University of South Carolina McKissick Museum have announced that Kristin Scott Benson is one of the recipients of the 2020 Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Awards. Benson had this to say in

I’m proud to announce the family is growing once again. Parents Mason and Raven Fisher are excited to bring home bluegrass baby Maybelle Lee Fisher today. Folks should remember Mason as the banjo player for the Dowdy Brothers band. Congratulations Mason,

Austin Tate, mandolinist with Carson Peters & Iron Mountain, and Amanda Muncy, were married on February 15. The two were wed at Freedom Tabernacle Baptist Church in Atkins, VA during an afternoon ceremony. Austin tells us that while Amanda isn't a picker,

Knoxville grasser John Miller, a guitarist and vocalist who has worked with a good many groups over the years, has been hit with a second round of cancer. And in the unkindest cut, it appears that the radiation treatment he

This report on the Barcelona Slow Jam comes from Michael Luchtan, an American living and studying bluegrass in Spain. It can be difficult for those of us in the States to realize what it's like learning bluegrass in missionary territory,

Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw, fiddler and vocalist with Hank, Pattie & The Current, and her husband, Keith, are celebrating the birth of their first child. Grady Harrison Kinlaw was born on February 7 at 3:47 a.m. at Maynard Children’s Hospital in Greenville,

The state of Oklahoma and the wider music community has been rocked by the untimely death of Jim Paul Blair on February 11, 2020. He was 58 years of age and had recently been hospitalized with a lung infection. Blair, an

Wendy Miller, Mike Lilly, and Larry Sparks Innovative banjo picker Mike Lilly, who has been battling ill-health – specifically a form of leukemia and cirrhosis of the liver – for several years, was moved into hospice care on February 4 (2020). His

Charlestown, IN, the hometown of celebrated bluegrass fiddler and bandleader, Michael Cleveland, has designated today (February 5, 2020) as Michael Cleveland Day. The honor was presented to him earlier today by Charlestown Mayor Treva Hodges, and Clerk-Treasurer Donna Coomer, to recognize