Funny stuff

Hello from North Carolina. This week I'm in the studio recording some Christmas songs with the Night Drivers. Between writing charts, and watching A Christmas Carol and Elfto get into the Christmas spirit in late July, I'm a little pressed

Out of necessity, I'm afraid this column is being composed on a less-than-current iPhone (I received no compensation from Apple for saying that, though I thought I could get Samsung to kick in a few bucks). The fact is I

Mr. Bluegrass Manners has been away from this column for a while. Since things began opening up in the United States and elsewhere, MBM has seized the opportunity to resume touring the country, attending bluegrass jam sessions, and raising one

Not to alarm anyone about the passage of time, but the Coen Brothers movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou came out over 20 years ago. In case you're one of the few fans of bluegrass music who missed it, this

Last week, I gave all publicists and artists who write their own bios in third person fair warning that in addition to the annual retirement of some of our most beloved adjectives, this year will mark the first retirement of

Several years ago I wrote a column about the ceremonial retirement of adjectives at the IBMA World of Bluegrass. This is now an annual event, usually scheduled on Tuesday, right before the event producers' craft fair and square dance, and

When it rains email scams, it pours. The same is true for bogus voice mails, fake text messages, and phony faxes (in the '90s).  Most of my current scammy voice mails are about expiring warranties. I'm a terrible target for this

Last December, we took a look at some of the ways that bluegrass musicians' lofty pandemic goals had run smack into the brick wall of reality. For many of us, the last 18 months have at times felt like a

Last week we discussed movie taglines, those one or two sentence teasers meant to entice us to rush out (or in) to see the film. As I said, they can range from the overly sparse: "An Event" (Earthquake), to the plot-spoiling

Before a new movie rolls out, motion picture studios all have the challenging task of boiling down each release into a pithy, one sentence tagline for the movie poster and other advertising. The idea is to both summarize the concept