• ARU – Acronyms R Us

    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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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,

  • 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