Second Street in O'boro to be renamed?

Nashville has its Music Row and Memphis has its Beale Street. Both are instantly recognizable for specific genres of music associated with them —and country and blues, respectively.

Now Mayor Ron Payne wants Second Street in downtown Owensboro, Kentucky, to have that same kind of recognition and appeal for bluegrass music fans by changing the street’s name so that it reflects the city’s growing reputation as a centre for bluegrass music.

Gabrielle Gray, the Executive Director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum, was excited by the developments ….

“My office within the bluegrass museum is on Main Street, a/k/a 2^nd Street, a/k/a Highway 60. For the 10 plus years I’ve lived in Owensboro and worked at the museum, no one has ever seemed to know what to call this street!

Meanwhile, every day of my life I see bluegrass musicians from all over the world walking along this street, coming to and from the museum with their instruments in hand. Sometimes, like on Saturdays when the museum’s Saturday Lessons Program is taking place, or during ROMP, those numbers swell to literally thousands of musicians walking along this street with their instruments in hand. So, when someone comes along and asks, ‘What do you think this street should be called if the City re-names it?’ and so many people – on their own – come up with the exact same answer as I did, then I have to say it probably makes perfect sense to call it Bluegrass Boulevard.

I would be ever so proud to see this happen and to see Bluegrass Boulevard lead directly to the proposed new International Bluegrass Music Center!“