It occurred to me that while I was sounding off about types of gigs that bluegrass bands should avoid, I was perhaps giving the impression I was trying to exclude whole categories of work for a bluegrass band, with no
Opinion / Humor
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No go zones for bluegrass bands
After my recent column about bar gigs, I suggested that, though we all enjoy complaining about them, they’re still worthwhile venues for certain kinds of bands. But are there other kinds of gigs that bluegrass bands sometimes play that they really
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Blue Yodel #52 – White House Blues
This is Blue Yodel #52, the same as the world-record number of strings broken by the band High Wind Advisory the night of December 5, 1983 in Delphi Plains, Ohio, when they attempted a bluegrass version of the rock opera, Tommy. I
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Notes from the bar birds
I wasn’t really expecting this, but last week’s column about playing in bars prompted an unusual amount of emails and questions on the subject. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but having done my share of bar gigs in
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Bar gigs… gotta love ’em!
When road musicians get together, reminiscing about gigs past is a pretty typical sort of conversation. There can be fond memories of the festival with the extraordinary scenery, the theatre with the great sound and near-perfect acoustics, or maybe the
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Blue Yodel #50 – Product Placement in Bluegrass
One of the words people use in describing bluegrass is integrity. Even accounting for a few posers, let’s say on the integrity scale of 100, bluegrass is a 95. Before we start celebrating, let’s consider that on the income scale bluegrass
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Train 45 video from Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys
When Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys performed at the Mid Pointe Music Festival in Cincinnati on September 29, they also shot a video for a local outfit that is restoring the old Emery Theatre there in town. Videographer Michael Wilson met the
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Road games for bluegrass musicians
The road can be dreary. This fact struck a deep and resonant chord with me again recently while driving between West Memphis, Arkansas and Cape Girardeau, Missouri en route to a show in southern Illinois. The following description has many slight variations,
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Blue Yodel #49 – Ask Mr. Blue Grass Smarty Pants
This week’s guest trivia master is Roland White, born Roland LeBlanc in Madawasca, Maine. The bluegrass Roland is not to be confused with the Roland LeBlanc who was captured at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 and later exchanged for
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What’s a few characters among friends?
We’ve spent some time here discussing altered and erroneous song titles and lyrics, mostly blaming the mistakes on good old human error. Human error, though, can at times be matched by the computer, the “smart” phone, and yes, the satellite radio