Opinion / Humor

Recently we discussed bluegrass urban legends, but it has since come to my attention that we have a lot bigger things to worry about, and no, I’m not talking about the worrisome deflation of banjo strap prices due to cheap

We’ve all been the recipient of urban legends or scams at one time, forwarded to us by email. In one of my early posts here, I passed along one in which an African prince had a Lloyd Loar and a

Last week we attempted to blame bluegrass music’s violent side on one man: Little Willie, the Scapegoat, we’ll call him. It works as a theory too, because without all the girlfriendicide (the technical term) committed by Willie, bluegrass songs would

A Bluegrass Junction listener—we’ll call her “Laura” (because that was her name)—emailed me recently, pointing out that there are an awful lot of bluegrass songs in which women are murdered. After much thought and reflection, I gave her this subtly

Is it “Mon-ROE” or “MUN-roe”? Is how we pronounce bluegrass names important? It probably is, yet it’s not always as simple as it might seem. Do we pronounce people’s names the way they would pronounce them themselves, or do we

I’m on a flight across North America right now, the second of three legs of my trip home from our recent European tour. This seemed like a good time to write this column, because for one thing the deadline is

Greetings from Prague, in the Czech Republic, where our European tour is starting this week. Before I go on to much less serious and important subjects, I want to acknowledge a big loss in bluegrass music, especially for northeastern bluegrass fans:

I walked into the store, and even though I was the only one in there, I saw a thousand faces staring back at me. The glare of the cellophane made it hard to see, but I liked it. By not

Early spring brings its familiar signs: the start of the baseball season, the blooming of daffodils, and in the northern states and Canada, a seemingly endless supply of mud. Late spring will be here before we know it, though, and

In his comment on last week’s column about stage communication, Dick Bowden requested that I write a follow-up article on band members who don’t know the number system. I don’t as a rule answer this kind of request, unless it’s