Ask Sonny Anything is a recurring feature where our readers pose questions to the great Sonny Osborne, one half of the iconic Osborne Brothers who redefined bluegrass music in the 1960s, and noted banjo maven and collector of fine prewar
Opinion / Humor
Bluegrass Rules – and don’t you dare break them!
“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,
Ask Sonny Anything… Bluegrass at the CMAs
Ask Sonny Anything is a recurring feature where our readers pose questions to the great Sonny Osborne, one half of the iconic Osborne Brothers who redefined bluegrass music in the 1960s, and noted banjo maven and collector of fine prewar
Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?
We live in an era of almost constant self-promotion across multiple platforms. We also live in an era of hackers, fat-free cheesecake, and the use of the word “platform.” In short, it may not be the best of times, but
Ask Sonny Anything… Driving Mister Bill
Ask Sonny Anything is a recurring feature where our readers pose questions to the great Sonny Osborne, one half of the iconic Osborne Brothers who redefined bluegrass music in the 1960s, and noted banjo maven and collector of fine prewar
The least interesting bluegrass stories of 2019
Usually at the end of the year, or sometimes at the beginning of the year, or now and then in the middle somewhere, I provide a summary of the year’s least interesting stories in the world of bluegrass music. It
Ask Sonny Anything… how about Jens Kruger?
Ask Sonny Anything is a recurring feature where our readers pose questions to the great Sonny Osborne, one half of the iconic Osborne Brothers who redefined bluegrass music in the 1960s, and noted banjo maven and collector of fine prewar
Bluegrass vocabulary checklist
A longtime friend of mine in Austin, TX, mandolinist Paul Glasse, recently posted in social media about his professor dad having fostered in him the habit of looking up words he didn’t know or wasn’t sure of, in order to
Ask Sonny Anything… Don Reno’s barbering skills
Ask Sonny Anything is a recurring feature where our readers pose questions to the great Sonny Osborne, one half of the iconic Osborne Brothers who redefined bluegrass music in the 1960s, and noted banjo maven and collector of fine prewar
Bro-country White Dove – the final edit
I realized that after last week’s bro-country, four-writer co-writing session produced that moving alternate version of White Dove (I didn’t say how it moved you, or what it moved you to do, just that it was moving), you may have