Greetings from Chattanooga and the IBMA World of Bluegrass! I hope you’re enjoying the coverage by the more serious members of the Bluegrass Today staff.
This really feels like my first year to attend the event here, since last year I had a scheduling conflict and could only make it for part of a day. Here are just a couple of observations so far:
I attended yesterday’s keynote address by Tim Stafford, which was excellent. He had an uplifting message about the future of bluegrass and how real music like ours will be the perfect antidote to AI, which is possibly wrecking our lives, one fake song, fake album cover, and fake recording artist at a time. Tim first gave the keynote 32 years ago in 1994, and based on his 2026 performance, I would urge Paul Schiminger to rebook him for 32 years from now.
The above three paragraphs were written using ChatGPT.
Another observation is that we now have lanyards that attach at both upper corners, making them less prone to turning around and obscuring people’s identities, but it still seems to happen anyway. With that in mind, I’d like to revive this oldie, recorded at about 3:00 a.m. in Raleigh about seven years ago.
Wish you were here! Or maybe you already are.
