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
Opinion / Humor
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From The Side of the Road… B-o-o-o-r-i-n-g
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
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From The Side of the Road… It’s the law! (part 2)
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
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From The Side of the Road… Bluegrass Deuteronomy, book 1
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
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From The Side of the Road… play by the rules
"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,
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From The Side of the Road… 2023 new product review
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
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From The Side of the Road… Facebook tips for bluegrass users
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
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From The Side of the Road… 2023 Bluegrass Quiz
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
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From The Side of the Road… do you still believe in Bill Monroe?
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
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From The Side of the Road… A Christmas Carol revisited yet again
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,