Opinion / Humor

The International Bluegrass Music Association's World of Bluegrass (and I should inform you that that's the last time, possibly in my entire life, that I'm going to be writing that out in longhand) takes place annually in late September/early October.

Mr. Bluegrass Manners is offering an unprecedented "two-fer" (even though he advises me that the term "two-fer" is not considered ideal bluegrass manners, though preferable, he says, to "two-for"). The reason for this MBM encore is the flood of questions

We haven't checked in with Mr. Bluegrass Manners for a while. It turns out he's been out on the festival circuit, spreading the gospel of good bluegrass etiquette. He's been visiting jam sessions, politely asking second bass players to go

As you may have noticed we live in a world of evolving language. The prevalence of texting has certainly been a big influence, as we seek more and more concise ways to express ourselves (when an appropriate emoji isn't available

Are you usually relegated to the status of opening act? Do you find yourself longing to be the closer? On the other side of the equation, are you a headlining act wishing you could go backwards in time and stature

We live in a world full of superstition. Perhaps this is the time to cue the drums to kick off that Stevie Wonder song, unless you object to drums, in which case cue the drum mounted on the bass and

Last week, we took a general, possibly oversimplified look at recording contracts as they relate to bluegrass artists today. This week, I thought we'd take a look at two hypothetical contracts, one drafted exactly how some record labels wish contracts would

Recording contracts can be problematic for all parties involved, especially now when people have stopped, you know, actually paying for music. It's been a longtime complaint of recording artists that the rules of contracts inevitably favor the record labels and not

Last week we gave some examples of how bluegrass bands' promotional material might read if we took out all the usual flowery and exciting adjectives and replaced them with one-sentence, blunt, "just the facts, ma'am" descriptions, e.g. "Five old guys

When playing a show in Chicago recently, I stopped to eat at a Greek restaurant on the northwest side of the city and I ordered something pretty standard: the gyro plate, and it was an excellent choice. When it arrived,