Opinion / Humor

1: If Leigh were a soup and Eric a sandwich, what kind of soup and sandwich combo would you be?  Leigh: Pea soup and bacon sandwich Eric: Tomato soup and bologna sandwich   2: What are your favorite 4-letter words? Leigh: Tony and Rice Eric: Earl

Last week, based on comments I received here and elsewhere, it seems that I suddenly became the best friend of sound engineers, simply by making an attempt to tell their side of the story. Now, could I get just a

Every Saturday I take my mother two Reese’s cups. She lives in a residential care facility with four other ninety-somethings and a rotating cast of under-appreciated care providers. She often calls me by my father’s name, her father’s name, or her

There are plenty of tense and troubled relationships in professional bluegrass music. Minor scraps to major feuds can often develop between label and artist, artist and event producer, side musician and band leader, musician and landlord, but one of the

After a hiatus of more than two years, The Bluegrass Intelligencer has arisen like a phoenix from the ashes of a bad metaphor. This hilarious site, which features parody, satire and inside humor for fans of bluegrass and acoustic music, is

Wanted: young band needed to take part in promotional experiment. Must be willing to risk loss of career and ridicule of peers. But if it works: You can become more famous than the Beatles! Okay, here’s the idea. Let’s say you’re an

My travels and adventures in bluegrass music have touched every thread of fabric in my life. At times this has been beautiful beyond comprehension. At other times, it's been a horrific nightmare - but I would trade none of it.

The world of music is strewn with the decaying corpses of marketing ideas gone wrong, or ones that were just wrong to begin with. Many of them linger in our consciousness decades later, and not in a good way, providing

Guest Questioner and Prize This month’s guest is a respected mover-and-shaker in bluegrass: the Yoda of Yellow Springs, the Doyen of Dayton, the Savonarola of Southern Ohio—Fred Bartenstein. Fred was the editor of Muleskinner News from 1969 to 1974, and has been

A while back I was invited to bring my fiddle to a potluck party some friends of mine hosted in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. I brought along my instrument in the hopes of finding some bluegrass musicians to