Greetings from the big city of New York. I'm here paying a visit to SiriusXM studios. Shortly I'm heading to Chicago to play with the Night Drivers on Friday, and on to Murphysboro, Illinois on Saturday. In short, I'm busy,
Funny stuff
From The Side of the Road… Mr Bluegrass Manners does COVID
Next week there’s going to be a long overdue new Mr. Bluegrass Manners column, so to get you in the mood, we're rerunning one from 2020 this week. Not just any one, though; this is the first MBM column after
From The Side of the Road… should there be bluegrass sequels?
Sequels are so often disappointing, Santa Clause 2 being a notable exception. Speaking of holiday classics, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol 2: The Next Verse ,wasn’t bad either. If you recall, Scrooge becomes the manager of the Cratchit family band and
David Mayfield Parade reads mean comments
The David Mayfield Parade - photo © Itamar Gat David Mayfield has always walked to the beat of his own drum. Though he grew up playing in an easy-going family bluegrass band, Mayfield has created his own niche in the genre
From The Side of the Road… drop a name, enhance your status
I addressed the issue of name-dropping early on in the life of this column. Béla 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
From The Side of the Road… Flatt & Scruggs Haiku!
We haven’t discussed haiku much lately, and I'm not sure with all that's going on in the country and the world, if anyone has noticed. You'll just have to trust me on this. Haiku, for those who've missed all the earlier
From The Side of the Road… bluegrass band phrase book
We sometimes exaggerate in bluegrass music as a way of compensating for the fact that we aren't generally playing music for a mass market audience. And, even though most of us actually like that smaller-scale community feel of our music
From The Side of the Road… dive bar bluegrass pinball machine
Some time ago, I proposed a video game for songwriters that would allow them to experience simulated hardships to enable them to write soulful songs without having to actually experience the heartbreak and tragedy that usually feeds that kind of
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
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