Opinion / Humor

The IBMA is in the midst of a membership drive which has been christened, "Catch the Bluegrass Wave." Before going any further I want to encourage you to become a member of this organization that continues to do great work advancing

We have an annual(ish) tradition here, which is to compile some of bluegrass music's most uninteresting stories of the past year, after which I try to narrow them down to five that really stand out as yawn-inducers. Why do we do

Last week we unveiled some of the bluegrass laws contained in recently discovered ancient scrolls from 1978. So as not overwhelm you with legalism, we've broken this up into two segments. I shall now, slowly, open the second seal, which

Last week there was a rerun of my bluegrass rules column, which made for an appropriate setup for this one, which is more about bluegrass laws than rules. We all make jokes about the "bluegrass police," an arm of law enforcement

"I like the rules. I think you know how I feel about that." – Fake Santa in Santa Clause 2 In the 1970s, once bluegrass music had evolved into its own genre, with its own festival circuit, its own record labels,

As promised last week, it's time for what used to be referred to as our "annual new product review." I called it that until people pointed out (in what I thought was a somewhat high-and-mighty tone) that things that are

There will be an upcoming column reviewing the best new bluegrass-related products of the past year, but at the moment I'm still in the testing phase with several of them—right now I'm putting the "Blade Rubber," a banjo player's right

Happy New Year! Was one of your resolutions to become more knowledgable about bluegrass music? Well, I'm afraid I'll be no help there, but if you'd like to start the year knowing how much you already know about it, you'll

Happy post-Christmas/pre-NewYear. I'm spending the holidays in a somewhat remote area of western Canada, where it was necessary to write and send this column in late November, to allow time for it to be delivered by dog sled (with some

I  want to wish you a very merry Christmas coming up this weekend. This is the long-awaited (by almost no one) follow-up to a Christmas Carol-inspired column that ran several years ago about a modern day bluegrass Scrooge, a grouchy,