Opinion / Humor

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

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

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

We’ve just made it through Thanksgiving, and I chose the phrase "made it through" deliberately. Let's be honest, for all people's happy and thankful social media posts ("I'm so thankful for my kitty Snooky-wookums, and the humans in my family

I want to wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving. Mine is a simple one: I'm up in the frozen north of western Canada, where Thanksgiving was last month. I'll be eating a pizza and filling in for other

I've become very disillusioned with the zodiac, I have to admit. First there were the overly general daily horoscopes: "Make sound financial decisions today. Expect news from a friend, family member, or other human being you may or may not

Greetings from Germany, where I'm on tour playing some duo shows with Paolo Ercoli. On Friday of this week (3:00 p.m. Eastern), the classic bluegrass show I do for SiriusXM, Truegrass, will be broadcast from the tour and will feature classic bluegrass

Greetings from Italy, where I'm starting a tour this week with Italian dobro player Paolo Ercoli. Since I am writing in from Europe, I thought I'd address one potential issue on European tours, and that is the language barrier (revised

Welcome to the Election Week edition of this column. There will be no endorsing of candidates for office (that's best left to daily newspapers with editorial boards like the Washington Post), political jokes, or misinformation about polling places or times,

I've discussed in past columns the fact that, while bluegrass bands still get booked at weddings, there are at most three appropriate bluegrass songs to play at a wedding. Even some of the instrumentals are questionable, at least if you