From The Side of the Road… can AI do bluegrass humor?

AI is here to stay, and is gunning for every one of our jobs. White collar jobs, that is, in the broader category of “indoor work, no heavy lifting” kinds of employment. The jobs especially at risk are the ones that everyone thought were immune from the kind of replacement that has already decimated industrial and farm jobs, not to mention Wal-Mart cashier jobs.

Before going any further, I need to digress just a little and lodge a small complaint about the abbreviation “AI” to begin with. Since the use of periods for initials is now passé, and even rejected on some government forms, the shortening of “Artificial Intelligence” to “AI” has saddled us with an abbreviation that simply looks like the name “Al,” as in short for “Alan.” This makes any statement about A.I. look like a guy named “Al” is at the heart of it all: “Al offers a bright new future for medical diagnosis,” or “Al raises privacy concerns” (Al’s such a worry wart), or just my first sentence above: “Al is here to stay and is gunning for every one of our jobs.” Al sounds like a pretty scary yet very busy guy.

But where were we? Oh yes, Al replacing all of us. Well, maybe not all of us: in a recent study, two groups of people were judged to be the safest from the threat of AI replacement: they were as follows:

  • Musicians who perform live
  • People who milk goats by hand

We can all breathe a sigh of relief there. But what about someone writing a humor column? About bluegrass, no less? Surely, it’s too obscure a field, at least at this point. It hadn’t ever occurred to me to worry about it. Humor, after all, is very much a human, as opposed to an “A”  quality. It’s one of the few things that really differentiates us from the animal kingdom: that, and understanding the rules of baseball. Other animals sing, some can be taught to play an instrument, but you find very few stand-up comics in the wild, though one animal behavior expert once told me that ferrets tell in-jokes to each other, but they don’t laugh, and no one else understands them or thinks they’re at all funny.

Perhaps I’m feeling too secure, though. Can’t humor be learned with enough of the right data input? I was a little afraid to do it, but I decided to ask ChatGPT to write a bluegrass humor column. My prompt was to ask it to write a humorous essay about a bluegrass band’s new fiddle player. I’m skeptical, but if this works out, your Wednesday humor column will now be written weekly by a guy named Al.

Here is his first effort:

The Bluegrass Band was in desperate need of a new fiddle player. Old Bill, the former fiddler, had been replaced after a scandal involving an accidental “twist” of the bow during a solo and a broken chair. So, the band decided to hold auditions. It turns out, finding a competent fiddler is like finding a needle in a haystack, if the needle had four strings and a love for fast-paced Appalachian tunes.

Not too bad so far. I don’t get the capitalization of “Bluegrass Band,” though, which makes it seem like we’re talking about that band Butch Robbins and Alan O’Bryant had going in the early ’80s. The fiddle player breaking a chair was unexpected, I’ll give Al that much.

AI continues: 

The first applicant, a guy named Rick, walked in with a fiddle so shiny it could double as a disco ball. He claimed he could play Orange Blossom Special backward while juggling, which seemed impressive until he started. What followed was more of a strangled chicken sound mixed with the noise of an engine trying to start in winter. Rick was politely shown the door.

Then came Sue. Sue had the confidence of someone who’d survived multiple family reunions, and came armed with a fiddle that looked like it had been through a few family feuds of its own. When she started playing, it was like hearing the heavens open and a chorus of angels getting a little too into it. The band hired her immediately.

Sue’s first performance? Well, let’s just say the chair stayed intact.

A return to the chair theme. Good, I think. 

My review, or maybe I’ll just let Al write it (I won’t do that, honest): This really isn’t too bad, especially considering that it was generated in about two seconds. I have to say that I didn’t actually laugh at any of it, but then I don’t often laugh at my own stuff. You’ll have to be the judge of that.

Still, it does reminds me a little of the unfunny friend we’ve all known in some form or another, who still thinks he’s funny and suggests that we get together and “swap humorous stories” like the humorless lieutenant in Good Morning Vietnam.

I did expect—and got—some cliches: the haystack reference, the family feud, the “fast-paced Appalachian tunes,” “Old Bill,” etc., but this is also kind of what we get when humans, who come from other more mainstream genres of music or entertainment-writing, attempt to write about bluegrass. They think they’re being clever (in a “knee-slappin'” “toe-tappin'” kind of way). We’re all cringing. However, the stereotypes make up a high percentage of their points of reference, so we should probably give Al a pass on that. Al just needs a little bluegrass immersion.

I think I’d rather not give it to him.

From The Side of the Road… what is success to a bluegrass artist?

How do we define “success” in the bluegrass music business? We certainly can’t do it by the standards used in the mass market music world, where success is considered to have been achieved when you own your own airplane and can no longer appear in public places. In other words, you’re a success when your lifestyle has become lavish but almost impossible to manage, at least without an entourage, which is also almost impossible to manage.

We aim a little lower in our world. As a general rule, if you’re playing bluegrass music for “a living” and your income is near or above the poverty line, you’ve pretty much made it. 

Others have more specific measurements, though: Some feel that the acquisition of a bus, even if you can’t really afford its upkeep, is the true measure of bluegrass success (in the country music world, by the way, a minimum of three buses are required for the “success” classification to even be considered). Some would say that you’ve truly arrived on the day you stop playing gigs where there’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. Others gauge success by the number of pages in your contract, how many figures are in your asking price, or whether your latest project is being released on LP (or that new “8-track” format all the kids are so excited about). There’s clearly a wide range of opinion about this.

If you’re a professional traveling bluegrass musician, I would define success very simply: you just need to be making enough money to stay one step ahead of your own fussiness. What I mean is that as you gradually get just a little more high-maintenance every year, and try to take steps to improve your travel conditions, you need to be earning enough to satisfy those higher standards.

You may think that musicians who become just a little spoiled got that way because they were exposed initially to a higher comfort level, and they decided it should then always be that way. To some extent this is true: you don’t really know what flying first class is like until you get seated there one day, and the next time you’re back in coach, the seats seem just a little more cramped than they were.

We’re capable of getting fussy all on our own, though. It creeps up on us without our even realizing it, and then we discover that once we hit our mid-40s or so, we can no longer travel the way we did when we were 20.

I started playing on the road when I was 18, and at that time I was fine sleeping in a sleeping bag on the ground behind a Bosnian truckstop (and did, seriously). Today, I’d at least want a mattress pad underneath me. Some of this is purely physical: when we’re 18, we can sleep in almost any environment, from a staircase to the floor of a car, or not sleep at all. 30 years or so later, if the pillow isn’t quite right we’re stiff for days, sometimes with an accompanying headache. And, if we don’t meet that bluegrass musician standard of a full three hours of sleep, we get pretty crabby the next day, too.

What this means is that if you’re still making the same money per gig you were when you were 18, I’d be willing to bet that you’re now losing money playing music.

Fussiness can be taken to extremes, though, too, and it’s good to look at how you got there, just in case you might be able to dial it back just a little. I blame two things: getting married and staying single. In order to remain a flexible road musician, it’s best avoid both of these states.

Married people can get caught up in their domestic bliss, and once they’ve set up their household exactly to their liking, the road can seem pretty rough. You find yourself trying to make everything seem as comfortable as it is at home. It starts with bringing your own coffee-making supplies with you. Then you start becoming aware of sheet thread counts. Eventually nothing will satisfy you unless you’re magically floating down the highway in a three-bedroom ranch-style home, with remote-controlled recliner, and eating food that’s exactly like it is at home. Next you start doing dangerous things like driving 20 hours straight by yourself so you can sleep in your own bed (it’s also remote-controlled). Whatever your own impression of the road is, the one thing we can all agree on is that it’s not like home.

Meanwhile, people who stay single too long have the problem of having the freedom to indulge their growing eccentricities. They go ahead and eat an entire peach-mango cheesecake with a shot of bourbon for dinner, while binge-watching Season Three of Leave it to Beaver (I’ve only done this once, I promise), and there’s no one there to suggest that it’s just a little weird. Soon, when you’re back on the road, you’ll demand the freedom to live exactly like you normally would, except now you’re in the company of three or four other people who are definitely less tolerant than the aging and easygoing dog you usually answer to.

Once you’ve gotten to a place in your career where you can make rock star-like demands in your contract rider (“Green room must be supplied with extra sharp N.Y. State cheddar cheese, with unflavored Triscuits, and one case of Ale-8-1 imported from Winchester, KY”), you’re free to be as fussy as you like, as long as there are people who will accommodate you. But, if you find you’ve developed champagne travel tastes while you still have beer fame level (and you’re still making Diet RC Cola performance fees), you may be able to take a look at how you got that way, and perhaps try to recapture some of that sleeping-bag-at-a-scary-truckstop spirit of your youth. 

Or you could just try to make more money.

From The Side of the Road… Auditions, part 1

If you’re playing bluegrass music professionally, or even semi-professionally, at some point you’re going to have to endure that dreaded pre-hiring ritual called the audition. 

Mind you I don’t mean to assume that everyone will go through the process of being a side musician first before becoming a band leader. Some go straight to the owner/manager position, without pausing to apprentice for Leroy Crank and His Underpaid Mountain Boys. Some start their careers playing with the brother they can’t stand before becoming a band leader (there are so many examples of this in bluegrass music, I don’t have the time or space to list them here). In this case, too, the process of auditioning for someone else is avoided.

In these cases, you will spend a lot of time on the judging and hiring (or not) end of the audition, so I plan to discuss both sides of this often nerve-wracking process, since I’ve experienced plenty of both.

When it comes to auditioning for someone else’s band, there are times when you’re simply in over your head and can’t “cut the gig,” but if you have some natural ability and musical chops at least close to those of the person you’re replacing, the rest is relatively simple, and yet people so often go wrong. My opinion is that if you arrive at your audition having followed these two simple guidelines, I think you’ll be in pretty good shape:

  1. Learn the material
  2. Don’t act crazy

Is that so hard? History tells us that apparently it is.

Note that for some band leaders who are more lenient and pride themselves on being able to work with a range of personality types, you might get by modifying number 2 by inserting the word “too” in front of “crazy.” Still, I think it’s good to aim high.

Beyond these two major principles, there are some more subtle ones that may improve your cause, like not looking like a slob or an ex-con or both, not showing up drunk or under the influence of hallucinogens, not hitting on the band leader’s spouse, not announcing plans to take over the band once you’re hired, etc. I consider these fine points that can be worked on after you’ve covered the essentials.

First, to the matter of learning the material, this would seem to obviously be Assignment One, and yet the number of people who show up to an audition first announcing that they “didn’t have time” to learn everything they were supposed to is way larger than you might think. Jimmy Martin used to complain that musicians would come to him not having learned the songs, and he felt, rightly I think, that it showed him a lack of respect. “They would learn George Jones’s material, wouldn’t they?” he used to say, and he had a point.

Why would a musician do this? I think the answer lies perhaps not so much in disrespect for any particular band leader, but more in disrespect for, and a lack of understanding of bluegrass music itself. There are a certain number of musicians who believe in their own ability to just fake their way through the material, because it has a limited number of chords and also “how hard could it be?”

I’ve had musicians show up to a gig fully believing they didn’t need to learn the stuff because they thought it “sounded pretty simple.” At that point I felt like Jimmy Martin, and was never more tempted to own a pair of white boots.

As for not acting crazy, note that I didn’t say, “don’t be crazy.” Those of us playing music for a living are all just a little off, if we’re honest, (not just fiddle players) but we do what we need to to function in society, and this includes not acting overly weird in an audition. Not every band leader is ready for alarmingly loud spontaneous laughter or dramatic crying for no apparent reason. Also, staring intently and saying, “Ole Slewfoot is THE GREATEST song EVER WRITTEN! EVER!!! DID YOU HEAR ME?!” or “I don’t believe Carl Story is really dead. Ricky Skaggs knows a LOT MORE than he’s letting on about this, believe me!” Just do your best to appear as level-headed as possible.

If you can nail down these two major requirements, you can get to work on some of the subtleties mentioned above. To those I would add that showing up with your own instrument is a plus, unless it was stolen from you en route (as happened to Vassar Clements before auditioning for Bill Monroe). 

I would also discourage brandishing a weapon of any kind at the audition.

Next week we’ll discuss auditions from the band leader’s perspective.

From The Side of the Road… the curse of the bluegrass prequel

It’s always exciting when new research sheds some light on the mysterious origins of some of the songs we sing, and the stories behind them. I was particularly thrilled, then, when a number of “prequels” to some of our beloved standards were uncovered.

These previously unknown tales were collected by the renowned ethnomusicologist Dr. William “Squeaky” Parvenu, who found these song specimens during his extensive research trips through the British Isles, the Appalachians, and two or three pizza joints in northern New Jersey.

It’s a relief to know that these prequels exist, and that they’ve been rescued from possible extinction by Dr. Parvenu (people are forever using old lyric sheets for house insulation or as firewood kindling). After all, in most cases, like Pretty Polly or The Rebel Soldier, we know there can’t have been any sequels, the major character being dead by the end of the song. How do you follow up a story that ends, “I killed Pretty Polly and I’m trying to get away”? Even a song called Little Willie’s Escape would be a very short song, since Willie announced his escape plans while actually at the jailhouse.

The story leading up to the tragic murder, though, could potentially be interesting. How did Willie and Pretty Polly meet? One of these uncovered songs, in fact, is called Willie and Polly’s First Date (I’ll spare you the details on that one: it’s 28 verses long, with verses 16 and 17 devoted entirely to what Polly ordered at a local restaurant). How was the rebel soldier (or maybe the Lord Mayor of Cork) captured? What were the circumstances that led Amanda Gilbreath’s brother to stab the narrator of Hills of Roane County for some unknown reason? Now we may have the answers to some of these questions, though I’ll warn you that in some cases you’ll wish a few of these questions had stayed unanswered.

I was particularly excited to find a prequel to Molly and Tenbrooks that was called The Birth of Tenbrooks. However, after reading through it, I thought the story wasn’t all that compelling. Here’s verse 4 (the following may contain graphic veterinary images, reader discretion is advised):

Kiper, Kiper, what’s that on the ground?
It might be the placenta, better walk around
Better walk around, oh Lord, better walk around

In the last verse, Tenbrooks gets his first taste of oats, which he likes a great deal (oh Lord). 

I was surprised to find out in the song, Before My Constant Sorrow Set In, that the “man of constant sorrow” was a lot happier in his youth:

For 10 long years I was contented
Not much at all was going on
I went to school and no one bugged me
And life just seemed to roll along
And life just seemed to roll along

This proves once again that happiness and contentment don’t make for exciting lyrics.

Jimmy Brown the Newsboy had some earlier years that had never been brought to light, until Dr. Parvenu found Jimmy Brown: Unemployed Youth.

This one is told from the point of view of Jimmy’s parents:

I just can’t seem to understand these lazy kids today
It’s time our Jimmy got a job and learned to pay his way
He should get a paper route and earn a little bread
Instead of hanging out all day expecting to be fed

In this new collection of songs, I was surprised to find one sequel after all, and it was to The Hills of Roane County. If you’re not familiar with the story, the song ends with the man being convicted for a murder he committed in his native Roane County, TN. He’s serving his sentence in a Nashville prison.

“Well I’ve just been released from this prison in Nashville
A friendlier judge finally heard my appeal
I’m free to start my sad life all over
Soon I’ll get signed to a publishing deal
Hey mama rock me

The authenticity of that last line has been called into question.

From The Side of the Road… flogging CDs from the stage in 2025

I’ve discussed the issue of CD sales here in the past. Disregard whatever I may have said before because there have been some important new developments on that front. Well, one, mainly: people really aren’t buying the things. 

I’m exaggerating a little: a few people are buying them, which is why we’re still selling them, but at the very least I think we need to come up with a different approach to pitching them from the stage to adjust to current realities. First we may need a better understanding of what those realities are.

The most obvious problem right now is not just that downloads, or streaming, or YouTube are replacing those sales, but that the CD players themselves are disappearing, and the cars that once contained CD players are rusting and in need of valve jobs. Obviously, the digital delivery of music has led to this disappearance, but we’re left with a purely practical problem: Fewer and fewer people have any use for those little disks that were all the rage in the mid-1980s (cue the Bon Jovi soundtrack). The fact that there are people who are still buying CDs while unable to actually play them says a lot, and we should feel good about that. We might as well be selling them 8-tracks (and don’t think I haven’t considered that).

I also blame the computer designers and manufacturers, who, in their quest to eliminate everything on a laptop but the screen (they’re working on that, too), made downloading CDs to your computer—so the music could then be added to your MP3 player’s library—obsolete. 

Meanwhile, on stage we tend to pitch them the same way we always have, but we’re getting a small fraction of the results we used to: “Folks, we’ve got some CDs for sale. It’s not too early to start your Christmas shopping, ha ha ha!” (somebody has to laugh at this; it might as well be you). 

I’m always tempted to find a way to inform people about the importance of the live CD sale to artists trying to make a living at this, but that tends to get into an overly complex discussion, or worse, something that smacks of a bigger guilt trip than Bury Me Beneath the Willow. It might go something like this:

“We have some CDs for sale. You may listen to your music other ways, but CDs still offer information about the songs, have pictures, and long ‘thank you’ lists. Plus we’d love to sign them for you. Many people don’t realize that CDs purchased from other sources usually put zero dollars in the artist’s pocket, unless it’s released on their own label, in which case they do make some money after manufacturing cost and commission charged by the seller. We’re fine with you streaming our music, though we really encourage you to use one of the premium paid subscriptions, because they pay royalties at a much higher rate, but it still helps us a lot if you would purchase a physical CD in addition to streaming. Not that we want to pressure you at all, but we’ll be by the table up on the hill about a mile from the stage for the next hour or so. We do take credit cards in addition to cash because we have one of those Square things that actually is square, now that I think about it, and . . .’

They started to glaze over right after “You may listen to your music other ways . . .”

Should we start trying to pitch merchandise—CDs or other items—like they’re a tip for the band? Why not? We do rely on it for a portion of our income, and, unlike with a tip jar, we’re offering something of value in return. But would this then lead to musicians chasing down members of the audience who hadn’t purchased anything and saying to them, “Was there something wrong with the service you received? Did we do some songs that offended you?”

The merchandise sale is still an impulse buy. If people really liked the show, they want to take some little bit of it home (sometimes that’s the bass player, but that’s often impractical). It’s up to us to provide something to satisfy that momentary desire, and then sign whatever that thing  is.

I haven’t even brought up the return of the LP and the cassette. Maybe the 8-track idea wasn’t so far-fetched. 

Maybe the best plan is to just continue in denial, and also sell more fly swatters and travel mugs. I wasn’t a business major, if that even needs to be said.

From The Side of the Road… 2025 Bluegrass Quiz!

It’s time for the annual bluegrass quiz, which fills some readers with excitement, others with dread, and still others with the urge to ignore it and move on to one of Bluegrass Today’s other top stories: “Oral Surgery Postponed For Jason Trimble.”

Last year, there was a name change for the quiz, which was generally well-received (when it was noticed) and it’s now actually referred to as a “quiz.” So welcome to The Bluegrass Quiz. As I mentioned last year, that was a name drawn up after a lengthy committee meeting. It was deemed preferable to the other proposed names: The Grass Exam, The Bessie Lee Mauldin Memorial Bluegrass Music Proficiency Test (or BLMMBMPT), and the redundant Bluegrass Assessment Test Exam (BATE).

It should be clear why Bluegrass Quiz was the winner in that field. It’s short, snappy, can be abbreviated to the breezy “BQ,” and it doesn’t carry the judgmental weight of the word “test.”

We also introduced a letter grade system last year, which might negate all that was gained by no longer referring to this as a “test,” since the reminder of that C- in 9th grade science might still be traumatic to some. Did that grade from the heavily biased Mrs. Comfrey really matter in the end, though? It’s doubtful, and these letter grades won’t matter at all.

This year, we have new a new guide for what each letter grade means which will either clarify them for you, or if they were clear before, make them murkier and more confusing. They won’t matter either, but here they are:

A (Seven correct answers): You are a full-fledged bluegrass music expert/geek. You probably know which recording of the Stanley Brothers’ Christmas is Near came out first, and you may have a book about the Lilly Brothers coming out this year. You were often picked last when choosing teams, but Jimmy Martin once named a dog after you.

B (five of six correct answers): This is kind of a sweet spot for bluegrass knowledge: you know the music well enough to really appreciate the fine points, but you’re not considered (very) weird, and you don’t toss and turn at night wondering what month Jim Smoak joined Bill Monroe’s band. 

C (three or four correct answers): You’re a casual fan of the music with some core knowledge. You know enough to correct people in jam sessions or in social media posts, but not enough to necessarily be right. You love bluegrass music, but you also have a life. You’ve also been known to listen to Huey Lewis & The News and like it. 

D: (one or two correct answers): You’re either new to this music or you rely on Facebook or YouTube for your information about everything. You’re pretty sure Lester Flatt played guitar and Earl Scruggs played the banjo, but you’re not sure which one was the lead singer. You don’t actually care who wrote Fox on the Run (see question 3).

F: Better luck next time. Please play again. If you even care.

Here it is. Please don’t Google the answers because what would be the point? Also, don’t use AI for assistance; AI doesn’t know anything about bluegrass yet.

The Bluegrass Quiz (BQ):

1. Jimmy Martin got his start playing in which well-known band:

    A. Roy Hall and his Blue Ridge Entertainers

    B. Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys

    C. The Foundations

    D. Chick Webb and his Orchestra

    E. Chick Corea and his Texas Playboys

    2. The Muleskinner Blues, popularized in bluegrass music by Bill Monroe, was originally recorded by . . 

    A. Vernon Dalhart

    B. The Beach Boys

    C. Jimmie Rodgers

    D. Little Jimmy Dickens

    E. William Shattner

    3. Who wrote Fox on the Run?

    A. Tom T. Hall

    B. Bill Emerson

    C. Ernest Hemingway

    D. Tony Hazzard

    E. Harlan Hazzard

    4. During a brief period in the early 1950s, when the Stanley Brothers weren’t playing together, Ralph Stanley considered a career change. What was he interested in becoming?

    A. A veterinarian

    B. A judge

    C. A stunt driver

    D. A non-banjo player

    E. A mobster

    5. Which of these bands/artists did Melvin Goins not play with:

    A. The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers

    B. The Goins Brothers

    C. The Stanley Brothers

    D. The Coen Brothers

    E. Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys

    6. In Mitch Jayne and Dean Webb’s Old Home Place, what town in Virginia did the singer run away to?

    A. Newport News

    B. Charlottesville

    C. Pound

    D. Assawoman

    E. Skinquarter

    7.  Which of the following instruments did Bill Monroe not record with:

    A. Piano

    B. Dobro

    C. Trombone

    D. Drums

    E. Vibraphone

    Answers:

    1:B, 2:C, 3:D, 4:A, 5:D, 6:B, 7:C

    From The Side of the Road… unnecessary musical accessories

    Happy New Year! Next week it will be our annual Bluegrass Knowledge Test (or whatever it’s being called now), so be studying up on that bluegrass trivia. Here’s some help: the answer to question #2 is going to be “B.

    For today, though, I’m busy working on my resolutions. Currently at the top of the list: spend more time on social media and eat more sugar. Since this, watching football, and trying to play Auld Lang Syne in B are taking up so much of my time, I offer up a January column from several years ago. In some years, to go along with the usual media obsession with year-end lists, I’ve tried to come up with a list of the best new music products introduced in the past year. These products may or may not be real.

    With the recent news in Bluegrass Today that a capo has been developed that doubles as an electronic tuner (unless that’s a tuner which doubles as a capo), I was reminded that I haven’t yet compiled the annual review of the past year’s best, or at least most interesting bluegrass accessories. As it turns out, products that have secondary functions, or “things that do other things” figure prominently in my list. Here are my picks for the top five of the past year:

    The Smart Pick: This is a product that will make the Apple watch and any other tiny smart phone-related device seem large, clunky, and very 2022. It’s a smartphone contained within a flat pick. This pick can perform most of the functions of a typical smartphone, including the ability to download apps, text, make calls, check email, the weather, sports scores, etc., all while in between songs at a jam session or on stage. It also has a 12 kilopixel camera. A bandleader can book gigs, hire and fire side musicians, and call home, all while appearing to be nervously fooling around with his/her pick. For the moment, because of the amount of hardware installed, it’s only available in extra heavy but other gauges will be available in the future.

    The Massage Strap: This is exactly what the name suggests: an instrument strap that has a built in vibrating massager, which can give at least your left shoulder and a diagonal strip across your back a therapeutic rubdown while you’re busy performing stressful songs and tunes like Big Mon and Man of Constant Sorrow. Studies show that singing about constant sorrow causes significant tension in the body, and that’s before dealing with the weight of a 20 pound banjo around you. There are also feelings of guilt, alarm, and empathy which arise from singing songs in which people are shot with no apparent warning or motive (Little Sadie), or people are stabbed for “some unknown reason” (The Hills of Roane County), which manifest themselves in stiffening shoulders and back. The strap massager has five different settings: Swedish, Deep Tissue, Inappropriate-touching-by-fan, Murder Ballad, and Bar Gig. Coin-operated models are available.

    Aside from the dual-purpose products above, there were three other new offerings I thought should make it on to the final list:

    Talkback: This is an app which generates pithy comebacks when having a dispute with a belligerent or incompetent sound engineer. This is also dual-purpose in a sense, because all the lines generated can also be used the other way: by sound engineers needing a cutting remark for uncooperative and prima donna-ish musicians. Examples:

    “I’ve been doing this for thirty years, pal; I think I know what I’m doing!”

    “You know this mess could have been avoided if you’d just done what I asked during sound check!”

    From the same company who brought us last year’s inflatable sideman comes Instacrowd, which is a set of inflatable audience members. When blown up to life size, each doll looks like a friendly and attractive member of your otherwise slim crowd. Through a remote control device you can even cue these members to applaud and even shout out vague requests. These are ideal for a club with low turnout (and dim lighting) or to fill up the front row at an outdoor festival, during the blistering hot 2:00 p.m. time slot. Standing or sitting models are available (chairs not included) and come in sets of 5, 10, 20, and 2,000.

    Crowdpaper: In a similar vein, this is wallpaper available for music clubs imprinted with a photograph of hundreds of additional tables of paying customers. This is perfect for acoustic music clubs who have no following of their own and who do little or no promotion of their shows, the kind whose web site only list shows from the previous year (you know these places—they’re always no-guarantee door gigs). On a night when only eight people have shown up for the show, the wallpaper raises the morale of the club owner, the band, and even the real members of the audience, who don’t feel they’ve just paid to see a band that apparently no one else wants to see; there are all those other people seated in the back of what appears to be a very large room. The wallpaper photograph is taken from a highly successful and unspecified nightclub in LA. A CD of ambient crowd noise is included with every purchase of one or more rolls.

    Pocket Bass: There has been continued innovation in developing upright basses, both electric and acoustic, which come apart, fold up, and get down to more manageable travel sizes for musicians who have to fly. Still every bass option is still pretty unwieldy, and none of the variations I’ve seen can fit in a plane’s overhead compartment, the way a mandolin or fiddle can. That’s all changed with this amazing new acoustic bass, which through an elaborate series of hinges and joints, folds in on itself in a 30-step process to fit into a reasonably-sized pocket. It ends up no larger than most smartphones or wallets, when fully compact. Bass players who have tested it have admitted that it “doesn’t sound as good as a true upright bass, but you have to love being able to pull it out of your pocket and place it in the tray with your keys and wallet when going through airport security.” The folding and unfolding process takes no more than 90 minutes, roughly the same amount of time it takes to arrange ground transportation to the stage for a traditional upright bass.

    From The Side of the Road… you will be visited by three spirits

    Merry Christmas to all! I’ve been given the day off (with pay), though when I told my boss here, John Lawless, that it was only once a year, he replied, “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 25th of December!”

    Below is a repeat of a Christmas column from 2015, that I have to say is one of my personal favorites. It isn’t among my most popular, though. That’s probably because to really appreciate it, it helps to have read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and not just have seen the movies. It borrows heavily from the narrative style of Stave Two (the second chapter) of that Christmas classic.

    This is a good opportunity to recommend reading the whole thing sometime, if you never have, either to yourself or in audiobook form. It’s really an extraordinary piece of work, and no movie has ever done it justice, much as I enjoy the various versions, from the Patrick Stewart one, to the Alistair Sym classic, to the Muppets and Michael Caine.

    Then you can come back and read this condensed (and mangled) Stave Two parody, with Scrooge cast as a miserly and widely disliked bluegrass bandleader. In the original story, Scrooge is startled when his bed curtains are suddenly drawn aside by the Ghost of Christmas Past. That’s where we begin, sort of.

    As our chapter opens, this Scrooge is staying in a hotel room at an indoor bluegrass festival where his band was booked. The phone rings with a 1:00 a.m. wake-up call, even though he requested 10:00 a.m., and his door is suddenly opened:

    His hotel room door was opened, I tell you, not by an overanxious housekeeper ignoring the “do not disturb” sign, but by an unearthly phantom, strange to behold. It had snow white hair, and the elderly appearance of Ralph Stanley, yet with the youthful, feminine face of Sierra Hull. It wore a green dress similar to one worn in a Rhonda Vincent promo picture, and its legs and feet were bare and shapely, yet masculine, muscular, and slightly hairy. It wore around its shoulder a sparkly gold guitar strap which was attached to what was clearly a pre-war Martin D-28 herringbone, yet, on further inspection, appeared to be a Chinese knock-off. It had the words “CHRISTMAS PAST” in block lettering inlaid on the fingerboard. That, and its legs underneath the dress made it more than a little creepy to look at. 

    And yet, as Scrooge observed the spirit more closely, these were not its strangest qualities, for as its guitar strap sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, so the phantom itself fluctuated, suddenly appearing to be a mandolin/guitar duo, then an entire five-piece bluegrass band, singing what sounded vaguely like My Rose of Old Kentucky, then in a glimmer becoming itself again, a single guitar-playing ghost.

    It wore a High Homburg-style Stetson hat, which, when it was removed from the spirit’s head, revealed both a bald spot, and a jet of blinding white light emanating from its forehead, like a stage spotlight, which shone directly on Scrooge, attracting moths and other insects to him, as had happened to him so often during night sets at summer festivals.

    It spoke to Scrooge in soft, muted tones, reminiscent of Alison Krauss, but with the accent and pace of Little Roy Lewis.

    “I am the ghost of bluegrass Christmas past,” it said.

    “Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me by the ghost of Carter Stanley?”

    “I most certainly am. Come, let’s take a ride on my bus!”

    “I think I’d rather walk,” retorted Scrooge.

    “Wearing that?!” asked the spirit (Scrooge was dressed in boxer shorts and a “Got Banjo?” T-shirt). “It’s cold out tonight. And since when do you walk anywhere, anyway?”

    Scrooge boarded the waiting coach reluctantly, and the spirit’s bus sailed through the night sky until it landed in a small parking lot behind a small country school house. The air was crisp and clear, there was snow on the ground, and it was clear that it was the Christmas season and that a concert was taking place inside the building. Scrooge and the spirit passed through the walls of the school till they were in a backstage area where he saw his former self, wearing a dark suit that was two sizes too big, tuning up a mandolin. A portly, jolly-looking band leader spoke to him:

    “Well, Ebenezer, are you ready for the show? It should be a good one! I want you to sing Christmas Time’s a-Comin’ if you’re up for it.”

    “Why that’s old Henry Briscoe!!” exclaimed Scrooge’s present self to the spirit. “Old Henry, alive again! He gave me my first gig!!”

    “Yes, and you weren’t very good, were you?”

    “No, it’s true, Spirit. I rushed badly, and I played the crappiest version of New Camptown Races you’ve ever heard, but old Henry was patient and gave me a chance. He always encouraged me.”

    Scrooge fell silent. 

    “What is it?” inquired the ghost.

    “Oh nothing,” replied Scrooge.

    “Something, I think.”

    “It . . . it’s just that I should like to have a word or two with my fiddle player right now,” said Scrooge.

    “You mean the one living in a one-bedroom apartment in Nashville with a family of four, including a crippled son?” asked the spirit.

    “Yeah, that’s the guy. I just paid him $50 for a Christmas party at which I made $1,500, and I wouldn’t let him put his wife on the guest list.”

    “Ouch!” replied the ghost. “Let’s see another Christmas.”

    “Do we have to?” asked Scrooge. The spirit did not reply, but grasped his hand firmly and pulled him back onto his bus.

    They arrived, in what seemed like an instant, at a simple office which looked very much like the headquarters of a record label. Scrooge again saw himself, now a more experienced musician. His face had begun to wear the signs of road weariness and artistic frustration. Behind a simple desk, a balding gentlemen was addressing him, while gazing out the window at nothing in particular: “It matters little to you, I’m sure. Our contract is an old one, made when you were a lot younger and had a much better band, and before I knew better. With a heavy heart, I release you.”

    “Have I ever sought release?”

    “In words? No. Never.”

    “In what, then?”

    “In a changed nature, in an altered spirit, and in two dud albums in a row. A Bluegrass Tribute to Engelbert Humperdink? I can’t believe I approved that turkey! No, I’m afraid we’re done here.”

    “Spirit, show me no more!” implored Scrooge. “Why do you delight in torturing me?”

    “Hey, pal, don’t blame me for your lousy choices.”

    With that remark, Scrooge seized the Stetson and pressed it down over the head of the spirit in a desperate attempt to extinguish its light. He suddenly felt overcome with exhaustion, and became aware of being back in his own hotel room. After fumbling in vain with his alarm clock, he fell back into a deep sleep.

    He missed his plane the next morning.

    From The Side of the Road… in response to A Bluegrass Christmas

    Last week it was announced here in Bluegrass Today that there was a Hallmark-esque Christmas movie (actually from Imagicomm Entertainment) with a bluegrass theme called—and I know this may surprise you—A Bluegrass Christmas. As soon as the article appeared I had friends and readers tell me through private messages or through social media posts that they thought I had either written it myself, or that the folks at Imagicomm had stolen the plot from one of these December columns from years past.

    I’m here today to assure you that I had nothing to do with it, and I wouldn’t flatter myself to think that anyone would bother to steal my bluegrass Hallmarkish Christmas movie plots. If someone had plagiarized one of my plots, someone could easily accuse me of doing the same first, because isn’t there really only one plot, anyway?

    Sure there are minor variations here and there: swap out an event planner for a bakery owner, change a Christmas tree farm for a quaint B&B, but the core narrative is pretty much the same: the bakery gets saved, cookies are baked, the guy and the girl get together, and a twinkly-eyed grandpa is very happy about it.

    According to last week’s Bluegrass Today article, A Bluegrass Christmas goes something like this:

    This time it’s a family horse sanctuary, operated by Katie, the comely granddaughter of a retired bluegrass star, whose funding is in jeopardy when their chief sponsor pulls out. But the sponsor’s kind – and very handsome – son Grant happens to meet Katie for coffee at a bluegrass music spot, and sparks fly. Can they convince Katie’s grandfather to perform again at a benefit concert to save the sanctuary?

    The most unrealistic part of this is the idea of there being an actual “retired bluegrass star,” since bluegrass stars don’t actually retire; they only announce their retirement, then hit the road about six weeks later when some good bookings come in.

    This is certainly not the time to quibble about realism, though. Below are some of my Hallmark-style Christmas movie plots with a bluegrass angle from a couple of years past. You can compare them with A Bluegrass Christmas and be the judge yourself:

    The Christmas Fiddle Project

    A fiddle-playing architect (played by Jason Carter) is engaged to a hard-nosed investment banker he has very little in common with (played by Alicia Witt), including the fact that she hates Christmas and he loves it. He gets called away to play fiddle for a Christmas festival in a small fictional town in Colorado where everyone wears thick sweaters. The woman who is producing the show (played by Danica McKellar) works for the town’s extremely jolly mayor (played by Greg Cahill), and she loves everything about Christmas and hits it off with the fiddling architect. Sparks fly when she accidentally kicks over a mic stand on the stage before sound check (she’s lovably clumsy) and they both kneel down to pick it up. Meanwhile his fiancee is furious that he took that “stupid Christmas gig” at all because she had planned a meeting with a consultant he was expected to be present for to discuss their high dollar wedding in Dubai. He stops answering her texts, especially because he’s busy with a pre-festival cookie-baking session with the mayor helping out (we are starting to suspect the mayor may also be Santa Claus). The producer loves the architect’s fiddle playing and he confesses that his fiancee always hated it because she considered it a distraction from his lucrative architecture work. The mayor turns out to be an excellent banjo player and the two play a rousing version of the Stanley Brothers’ Christmas is Near while the cookies bake. The festival producer, during a post-cookie wintry walk, convinces the architect to stay in their quaint town forever and just a make a living playing the fiddle and “doing Christmas things.” They kiss, he agrees, and it’s the best Christmas ever. The next year he also designs the town’s new city hall, which will be made of logs.

    An Industrial Strength Christmas

    A bluegrass singer (played by Rhonda Vincent) is struggling to make a living in Dayton, Ohio in 1958. She’s booked five nights a week at Jake’s Tavern. It’s late December, and a dashing young vending machine service man (played by Andrew Walker) chats her up one night during sound check. They discuss their shared country upbringing, their struggles with big city life, and their mutual love of Christmas. His wife back home was recently killed in a tragic snake-bite incident, and he has felt unready to open his heart again (until now). The meeting was secretly arranged by the helpful bartender (played by Joe Mullins) who we suspect may actually be an angel. Our vending man finishes installing the new pinball machine and has finished his route for the night. He hangs around to listen to the singer he’s bonded with, and during the first set is called up to sit in (he’s also a singer, but has never pursued it professionally), and they join together for a moving rendition of I’ll Be Home For Christmas. Red Allen appears to wink from a framed black and white photo behind the bar. 

    Christmas at Sunny Ridge

    An ambitious stockbroker (played by Ronnie McCoury) has lost the true spirit of Christmas, too caught up in his successful but all-consuming career. On Christmas Eve he’s visited by an angel (played by Claire Lynch) in the elevator of his luxurious high-rise building. She reminds him that he once loved everything about Christmas and even played the mandolin quite well. Her parting words were, “Go to Sunny Ridge. You’ll recapture your spirit there.” Shaken by the experience he drives his German sports car to Sunny Ridge, in an unnamed state or province, where by chance he meets a beautiful event planner (played by Lacey Chabert) when checking into his quaint B&B. She’s not normally his type (she’s wearing jeans and a scarf she knit herself), but he’s intrigued when she invites him to the local Christmas Apple Cider Festival. She had been married to their locally famous TV weather man but they had parted ways over his dislike of snow and Christmas. The two bond over cider and gingerbread cookies and she reveals that she plays some rhythm guitar and knows all the words to Christmas Time’s a-Coming, her favorite song. She asks the stockbroker if he plays the vibes, so they could possibly play the song together, and he says no, but says that he happened to bring his mandolin along. Love and the Christmas spirit blossom as they jam and drink more cider (the hard variety now) in the reception area of the B&B, with the wry but kindly innkeeper (played by Larry Sparks) looking on and winking at both of them.

    From The Side of the Road… can you count on me?

    I recently encountered one of the more pointless and irritating social media threads I’ve seen, at least since the 2024 election. It had to do with lyrics of the Christmas song, I’ll Be Home For Christmas. In the thread I saw, which was on Meta’s relatively new Twitter/X alternative, Threads—the post had over 500 comments at last count—there was a great deal of incredulity and offense taken that anyone would attempt to suggest that the correct lyrics in the first verse of the song are, “you can plan on me,” when the lyrics, according to the author of the post, are “you can count on me.” A number of people felt strongly about it and continued the unnecessary argument, which we’ll come back to momentarily.

    Apparently this is all related to a TikTok video of just over a year ago about the same subject, which suggested that our belief that “you can count on me” is the correct way to sing that line is another example of the “Mandela Effect,” which I believe is the phenomenon in which people (mostly of the Gen X age group) remember Nelson Mandela as Jimmy Martin’s mandolin player in the early 1970s. I could be wrong about the specifics, but it’s about collective memory and people reinforcing their false memories of past events.

    Here’s the problem with all of this, at least where song lyrics are concerned: there are really no arguments to be had about song lyrics in this day and age in which we have these little handheld devices that enable us to look these things up. Even when we didn’t, the song lyric question has always been very cut and dried. It’s just that in days of yore, we could argue about it in a bar, and occasionally place bets on it, until someone was able to find a source for the answer. If someone wrote the song and had it copyrighted and published—and, we assume, recorded, which is the only reason we’d know about it—then those lyrics are the correct ones. End of story.

    In the case of I’ll Be Home For Christmas, the lyrics were written by Kim Gannon and were published in 1943. The lyrics were and are:

    I’ll be home for Christmas
    You can plan on me

    That’s how the line was sung on the original recording by Bing Crosby. Even if “you can count on me” feels more like what someone would say nowadays, or we’re just more used to hearing that phrase, the lyrics remain what they are. However, it’s not some mystical collective memory error either, because the song has also been recorded countless (or “planless”?) times since then, using the phrase “You can count on me,” from Johnny Mathis to the Carpenters. 

    Some Carpenters devotees even suggested that whatever lyrics Karen Carpenter sang are by definition correct. “The Carpenters can do no wrong,” is their position. These same people probably believe that “birds suddenly appear” around certain attractive people just because they want to be close to them.

    The lyrics are still the lyrics as written by Kim Gannon, and arguing about it is just a waste of time and energy. Is it wrong to sing “you can count on me”? Of course it isn’t. But suggesting that the altered lyrics are actually the correct ones and always have been is a little gaslighty. 

    In bluegrass music we have whole generations of people who sing “When I die won’t you bury me on the mountain” in the chorus of Blue Ridge Cabin Home, because they learned it from the Bluegrass Album Band that way, or from someone else who learned it from from the Bluegrass Album Band, when the original lyrics are “when I die won’t you bury me in the mountains.” Listen to the Flatt & Scruggs original. Granted, the “s” is hard to hear, but the “in” is quite clear. Is there something wrong with singing “on the mountain?” Well, it would be better if it were a deliberate choice: “I think the guy should be buried on the mountain. Doesn’t that seem nicer?” but it’s not a big deal. We know who wrote the song, though, and there is an original recording, so there is actually no debate to be had about what the right lyrics are, no matter how commonly the wrong lyrics are sung and recorded.

    On the other hand, we have very old songs we do in bluegrass music that are of unknown origin, like some of the murder ballads that came to us from the British Isles, with all sorts of lyric variations through the years as the song has been passed down through aural tradition. There can be no debate about those lyrics, either, because there is no “correct” or “incorrect” in this case. The original was probably sung at a party in the north of England somewhere in 1844 by someone long-forgotten (and that’s just as well because he may be the guy who actually killed Pretty Polly). So if some mansplainer comes up to you at a jam session and says, “I’m sorry but the second line of the chorus of Banks of the Ohio is ‘in no other’s arms entwined,’ not ‘in our home we’ll happy be’; that’s how Olivia Newton John sang it. Your way doesn’t even rhyme!” you can reply, “Hey, my drink is just about done; could you go get me a refill?” (note: I didn’t make the Olivia Newton John part up. You can look it up).

    In short, there are no circumstances under which we should be debating about the lyrics of any song at all. We can argue about which ones we prefer, but that’s a whole other discussion, and a subjective one.

    Returning to I’ll Be Home For Christmas, I always thought the truly controversial lyrics of that song were:

    Please have snow and mistletoe
    And presents on the tree

    Many consider the notion of putting presents on, rather than under the tree, to be pretty unusual and downright impractical for any presents larger or heavier than earbuds. This is why numerous artists have amended that line to be presents “round,” “neath,” “by,” or the poorly-metering “under” the tree. Do those choices make more sense? Yes. Are they better for the tree? No doubt. Are any of them more correct than the original? No they aren’t. The writer wanted those presents “on the tree.” The writer also asked for snow, which in many climates is also a pretty unreasonable request. Should we have a Florida version?

    Please have rain and and candy cane
    And presents somewhere in the general vicinity of the tree

    Sure. Why not? And let’s go ahead and request a mountaintop burial, while we’re asking for stuff, but let’s not waste valuable social media energy (an almost never-used phrase) or even barroom energy on what the right lyrics of a song are. 

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