Four years ago, just before her 40th birthday, Kelly’s voice gave out near the end of a weekly gig with her band, Acoustic Endeavors.
She’d being singing for years and had sore throats and other vocal issues over the years, so she wasn’t worried. She figured her voice would be back to normal in no time.
She figured wrong.
Her voice problems worsened and a couple of months ago, after listening to playbacks of studio recordings with bandmate and life partner Warren Amberson, Kelly reached the hardest decision of her life. It was time to walk away from the microphone.
“For the good of the band, it’s time to do something different, which is very, very hard to do after 22 years,” she said in a recent interview.
In the past, Warren remembered, “She just opened her mouth and good things came out. It’s not like that any more.”
Kelly has spasmodic dysphonia, a relatively rare neurological disorder that causes vocal chord tremors that make clear speech difficult and uncontrollable. Unlike muscular dysphonia, the kind that Tony Rice has, there is no cure or therapy that can reverse the course. Botox injections help sometimes, but only for a short while.
She’s hoping – the whole band is hoping – that the latest injection will leave her in good enough voice to finish the Roanoke, VA-based band’s latest CD, Old 22. But since that might not be doable, she and Warren are scouring earlier studio sessions to find snippets here and there of Kelly in good voice. “Sometimes, it’s one phrase at a time,” Warren said. “We’re listening for good things that we can keep.”
Like anyone who deals with a life-changing medical condition, Kelly experienced a lot of “why me?” moments early on after she was diagnosed by specialists at Wake Forest. “You cry and you think, man, why did this have to happen to me?”
On the first ride back from Wake Forest, she thought of things she would rather endure. “You could cut off my pinky toe. You could break my leg in half,” she said. “You could do it over and over to me a hundred times instead of this.”
With time, though, came acceptance. Sure, she wishes the outcome could be different but she’s grateful for what she had a chance to do. “I’ve got a lot of very supportive people around me,” she said. “We got to do some really great, incredible things. We’ve got great recordings of my voice. We’ve had great experiences. We got to do really cool things and it was because of music.”
>And she’s still thinking of ways she can help the band, including booking and working on social media. “I can be the best damned cheerleader for the band you’ve ever seen,” she told me. “And I still think I have a lot of tunes in me that are worth writing. And who knows, right now I’m not a very good lead guitar player. Maybe I’m supposed to turn into the best lead guitar player this side of Danville.”
While Kelly is starting to come to terms with the likelihood that her singing days are over, it’s still tough for her bandmates, especially Warren.
“We went through all the stages that one can go through when you realize this isn’t going to get better,” he said. “There’s no one in the world I’d rather play with. My music is 100 times better when Kelly is with me.”
The band will continue, with John Miller stepping in on guitar and vocals. Warren described it as an interim arrangement that can be as permanent as John wants to make it.
John’s presence would bring the band full circle, in a way. His late brother, Eddie, played with Acoustic Endeavors years ago when the band was based in Nashville.
Kelly was insistent that the band continue. Everything else is fluid. “We’re trying to figure it out as we go,” Warren said.
Kelly sees herself as an ambassador for the disorder, perhaps able to help others cope with difficulty talking.
She’s also a reminder of the fleeting nature of life, of not taking things for granted. Her difficult four-year journey has helped Warren appreciate that. “If we had to lay the instruments down today and never play again, we’ve had wonderful memories,” he said.
They were fortunate enough to play and see parts of the world they might not have seen without the music.
And we’re fortunate, too. Kelly says she still hears her real singing voice, the one that’s gone now, in her head. We can still hear it, too, strong and pure, on some wonderful recordings.
Acoustic Endeavors has released the second of four 5-song digital albums, celebrating the band’s 20 years of recording and performing original bluegrass music. In what is becoming more common each year, they have chosen to pop out four of these 5 song digital EPs every few months throughout this, their 20th Anniversary year.
The first 5 songs were hardcore grass, but20 Years… 20 Tunes – part II finds the group exploring just a bit outside the boundaries of the traditional bluegrass ensemble, utilizing percussion, trumpet, harmonica and lap steel on several of the tracks.
Primary singer and songwriter Warren Amberson said that he didn’t really intend that these songs would come out with more of an Americana vibe. He just took the songs where they seemed to lead.
“We all love bluegrass music. That’s what we grew up playing, and it’s how we came together as a band. But I think every songwriter can understand that feeling when you have a song that calls for a different sort of treatment.”
Warren said that this edition’s opening track, Rules, nicely captures the mindset he is channeling. The verses speak of all the rules we learn from childhood on, with a chorus that wonders who gets to set them all up. He ponders the same thing concerning the bluegrass police.
Throughout Acoustic Endeavors’ 20 year history, they have seen a number of band members come and go, but the one constant has been the singing/songwriting partnership of Amberson on bass or mandolin, and guitarist Kelly Green.
But both this and the initial digital EP have been released without any lead vocal contributions from Kelly, who has been suffering this past two years from adductor spasmodic dysphonia. This muscle malady in her vocal shores had made both speaking and singing difficult, but successful treatment has her voice nearly back to full force. The next installment of 20 Years… 20 Tunes promises to be all Kelly, all the time.
Other current members include Dewey Peters on guitar and John Lawless (hey… that’s me!) on banjo. Bass player emeritus Greg Honeycutt is also featured on these cuts, as is fiddler Billy Hurt, now with Karl Shifflett. Chris Hodges of FloydFest fame provides percussion.
Radio programmers can download all ten of the tracks from 20 Years… 20 Tunes released to date at Airplay Direct, and they are available for digital purchase from iTunes, CD Baby or bandcamp.
Roanoke, VA-based Acoustic Endeavors is celebrating 20 years recording and performing original music with a new album – and a unique way of releasing the tracks.
The project is titled 20 years… 20 tunes, but instead of dropping a CD with 20 tracks, they will be releasing them digitally, five at a time, every few months throughout the year. The first quintet hits on July 20, with special pricing of $.20/each for downloads all day on Wednesday via their Bandcamp site.
Banjo player John Lawless (hey… that’s me!) will be on WAMU’s Bluegrass Country with Katy Daley Wednesday morning at 9:00 a.m. (EDT) to talk about the project and preview the songs – and explain why it’s been so long since the last release.
Mandolinist, lead vocalist and primary songwriter Warren Amberson has never been one to take the straight path, and says that this style of staggered release perfectly suits his vision for this 20th anniversary record.
“For me, it’s really all about the songs, and doing it like this gets the songs out to the people with the minimal amount of hassle.
The download style is changing everything about how recorded music is distributed, and as we were looking at releasing our 20 year album, it started to make more and more sense to do it this way.”
Acoustic Endeavors also features Kelly Green on guitar and vocals, Greg Honeycutt on bass, Dewey Peters on guitar and Billy Hurt on fiddle.
These five new tracks are available to radio programmers via Airplay Direct.
All of the songs were written by Amberson. Here’s a listen to one of the tracks.
Richard Thomspon has prepared this brief biography of Carlton Haney. Its publication has been delayed awaiting some of the personal tributes that are included, and a spot of poor health on Richard’s part.
Carlton L Haney, one of the most colorful, larger-than-life characters in a bluegrass world full of strong personalities, passed away on March 16 in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was 82 and he had suffered a stroke earlier in the month.
Born in Reidsville, North Carolina, in September 1928, Haney first became aware of bluegrass music in the early 1950s through dating Melissa Monroe, the daughter of the music’s originator, Bill Monroe.
This friendship led Bill Monroe to ask Haney to book some show dates in the North Carolina Piedmont region. These were successful and Monroe recruited Haney to manage advance publicity and promote his show dates. That arrangement lasted for a couple of years. In the summer of 1955, Monroe sent Haney to Bean Blossom, Indiana, to help with his Brown County Jamboree. Apparently, Haney’s ideas didn’t please Bill’s older brother Birch, the resident manager there for several decades. Already Haney was demonstrating that his thinking was a way ahead of his time.
Haney managed Reno & Smiley & the Tennessee Cut-Ups from January 1956, until the group’s break-up in February 1965. He also helped initiate the group’s Top O the Morning TV show, which he produced, on WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia. During his time with Reno & Smiley, he wrote songs for the group, including He Will Forgive You, Kneel Down, Never Get to Hold You in My Arms Anymore, and co-wrote the group’s chart hit, Jimmy Caught the Dickens Pushing Ernest in the Tub.
From 1956 through 1964 Haney also ran the New Dominion Barn Dance, a stage attraction and country music radio show broadcast each Saturday evening on WRVA-AM, Richmond, Virginia.
After Reno & Smiley’s break-up, Carlton Haney booked shows for Red Smiley & the Bluegrass Cut-Ups and conceived of a series of Country Shindigs, package shows in huge venues in multiple markets. His first took place in the Coliseum, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with Ray Price, Porter Wagoner, Norma Jean and Kitty Wells.
Forever etched in the history of bluegrass music is the date and place of the first multi-day, multi-artist bluegrass festival – held at Cantrell’s Horse Farm, Fincastle, Virginia, Labor Day weekend, September, 3rd, 4th and 5th, 1965. In organizing this event, Haney created the model that others have used to promote bluegrass music for the past 45 years and that, critically, provided a new source of income for bluegrass bands at a time when the market was otherwise weak. There are now reckoned to be more than 500 festivals annually and it is a world-wide phenomenon.
There are music historians who argue that the Fincastle festivals also served as the model for the massive Woodstock rock music festival in 1969.
Another of Carlton’s original ideas was “The Blue Grass Story,” a feature that saw Bill Monroe, who Haney had identified as having originated bluegrass music, perform in successive reunion with former members of his band, many of whom, including Jimmy Martin, Clyde Moody, Don Reno, Mac Wiseman, Carter Stanley, Sonny Osborne, Chubby Wise, Jim Eanes, and a number of others, had gone on to their own prominent careers.
Subsequently, Haney promoted early bluegrass festivals in Berryville, Virginia; Camp Springs, North Carolina; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; and Escoheag, Rhode Island. In 1972 he began an annual Newgrass Music Festival at Camp Springs, North Carolina.
Beginning in 1969 Haney published the bluegrass music periodical Muleskinner News. Grassound, a magazine for younger enthusiasts, followed in 1974.
At his peak, the colorful impresario, once dubbed “The P.T. Barnum of Country Music,” promoted more than 100 major shows a year in 30-some cities, from Philadelphia, in the east, to Oklahoma City, in the west. He also played important roles in the careers of the Osborne Brothers, Porter Wagoner, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty and Merle Haggard, on two of whose albums, Okie from Muskogee (1969) and The Fightin’ Side of Me (1970), Haney can be heard introducing the country music star.
Haney is featured prominently in the 1971 movie Bluegrass: Country Soul, which was re-issued on DVD in 2006.
The International Bluegrass Music Association gave him its Award of Merit in 1990 and in 1998 he was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
From 1980 Haney’s involvement in the music business was considerably reduced, although he occasionally made appearances at bluegrass events, such as the story stage at the Bass Mountain, North Carolina, festival; the early ‘90s video series Grass Roots to Bluegrass; and an event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Fincastle Bluegrass Festival in 2005.
A charismatic individual, Haney was a determined leader who would share his wisdom with anyone who would listen. He had valuable insights, ground-breaking but viable proposals, and strong views on all sorts of topics, not least music.
What follows are personal tributes to Haney from a few of the people who knew him well.
Warren Amberson is mandolinist and vocalist with the Roanoke-based quintet Acoustic Endeavors; he has known Haney for close to 30 years.
“I’ve always considered myself the Forest Gump of bluegrass, in the sense that through the music God has put me in all these amazing situations at just the right time. I met Carlton when I was young and very impressionable in the ways of bluegrass – and, had no idea how important he was.
From my time in Europe, starting the 1st US Army Bluegrass Band, all the Legends of Bluegrass music that I have played with and befriended over the years (playing with Monroe at the Opry, the Watson’s, Baker’s, McCoury’s, O’Connor’s, Rice’s, the list goes on and on), how blessed and fortunate I have been to be exposed and part of all these things.
One thing that locks me with all the people that I’ve been involved with was Carlton. I was part of a very special club, one that he invited me into. During the weekend of the last show that I played with Vassar Clemens, we talked about Carlton. His friendship and endorsement made you part of the club. And, I am very honored to have known that. I’ve often said there are people in bluegrass music with many Grammy’s, and Honors with money that goes along with that, but they didn’t really know bluegrass because they didn’t know Carlton Haney.
A couple years ago I was asked to be on the Board to restart the Fincastle Festival, the festival that Carlton originally started. (The Roanoke Bluegrass Festival held in Fincastle, Virginia). This being my home, and Fincastle being 15 minutes away, I was very proud to be asked. I said, ‘Sure, with one stipulation, that Carlton Haney would be part of the Festival’. Their response to me was, ‘Who is Carlton Haney?’
Rest assured I educated them on who Carlton Haney was. And, I am very proud to say out of the all the great things that I’ve done, all the stages I’ve played with all the Bluegrass Heroes, all the thankful audiences, the most important thing that Warren Amberson has ever done in bluegrass music was to get Carlton Haney back to that festival that day in Fincastle. What a great day it was!
And, I got to be part of it. The “Bluegrass Story” was told in all it’s glory, old footage was shown, and Carlton got to come home that day. He cried because he couldn’t believe that people cared. And, if Carlton was here, which he is and will be forever in the history of this music, as he would say and as I will now say, ‘Nuff said.’
Rest in peace Carlton…”
Doug Hutchens, Blue Grass Boy (1971), song writer, writer of articles for bluegrass music periodicals, DJ (Blue Grass Today) and former employee of Gibson Guitar Company, reflects ….
“I went to Berryville the first time in 1970 and was camping (basically sleeping in the car). I got there on Tuesday of what he called his ‘Blue Grass School.’ He had Monroe’s band to come in on Wednesday to do some workshops.
On Thursday evening about sundown I ran upon two guys from New York, Kenny Kosek’s and Jim Tolles. But we were just jamming at the back of my car when this guitar player came by…..we didn’t know him but knew he had played some with Reno and Harrell.
After a few minutes we were picking pretty good this other guy came by and the guitar player said Dewey get your bass and he did. We’d probably played an hour or so and Carlton and John Miller came walking by and stood and listened ’till we ended the song and he said ‘Del, I know Dewey but who is the rest of your band.’
We didn’t know the guitar player until then but it was Del McCoury. Dewey was Dewey Renfro who had been in some of Del’s former bands. Del said I really don’t know these guys we just got together a few minutes ago. Carlton couldn’t believe it…he said you guys don’t know each other? We said no and he ask each of us who we were and Kenny and Jim were from New York and I was from Spencer Virginia. Carlton was elated. He said, ‘Boys this is just what I hoped would happen. Guys from all over the country meet and be able to play and sing together having never met an hour ago.’ He listened a while and walked on down the field a little ways and came back.
He said that JD Crowe was supposed to close out the show on Friday night but he had to do something in Washington for the Smithsonian and how would we like to play JD’s spot.
It floored all of us….
So Friday night at 10:00 Fred Bartenstein was introducing us when Carlton came out on stage. Fred had said that we have this put together band and what are we going to call them…lets call them the Watermelons… Then Carlton took the mike and said that ‘these boys have made my dream come true,’ ‘when I first started doing these shows I hoped that boys from all other the country would meet and play the music of Bill Monroe together.’ Lets call them the Muleskinners… With that Del did the run and Kenny went into Watermelon Hanging on the Vine.
We went on into Toy Heart and On and On, they kept coming. After a little while someone called for Uncle Pen and Sonny Osborne came out and sang baritone on Uncle Pen. Then Billy Baker and Wayne Yates came out for a tune or two. We were running over on time bad, but having a wonderful time.
Finally Carlton came out and said that we’d have to shut it down for the night but invited us to be a part of the “Story” on Sunday. We did an hour and the sound man did a tape of it for me. It was the first time I was ever on stage at a Blue Grass Festival and after we came of stage that night Carlton came out to my car about the time I was getting ready to get in the back seat and go to sleep and said there is a little storage building on the other side of the stage with a cot in in. ‘Why don’t you sleep there from now on, you’ll be much more comfortable.’
For some reason I didn’t get the word of when to be at the stage and I missed the “Story” tune. Earl Sneed was playing banjo when I walked up while the “Story” was being done. I’ve always regretted missing that but it was a great time on Saturday night.
In later years Carlton brought up that night many times as the first time that ‘his dream came true’ of having people from all parts of the country and walks of life be able to play Blue Grass together having never done it before.
In recent years I’ve spent hours on the phone with him. A call always lasted a couple of hours and I wish I had taped some of our conversations. He was a wonderful “Character” and always thinking creatively.
Fred Bartenstein, the editor of Muleskinner News from 1969-1974, has also been a broadcaster, musician, festival MC and talent director, composer, record producer, compiler of the first bluegrass market research, founder of a regional association and a lifelong fan…..
“My extended family lived in Lexington, Virginia, and I spent summers and holidays there as a child. I had become quite interested in bluegrass music and watched Red Smiley & the Bluegrass Cut-Ups on Channel 7, WDBJ, Roanoke, VA. Either on that TV show or Roanoke radio, I heard about the “Bluegrass Festival” planned for September 3-5, 1965 in nearby Fincastle. I was 14 years of age. I convinced a local bluegrass friend to take me to that event and it profoundly changed my life, especially the Sunday afternoon “Bluegrass Story,” narrated by Carlton Haney.
In 1966, I went to the festival again. That Christmas, determined to become a disc jockey, I asked the Lexington, Virginia radio station, WREL, for a summer job which, amazingly, came to pass. Several times that summer, I spoke with Carlton Haney on the phone about bluegrass and records, and even visited him at McFarlane’s Trailer Park in Hollins, where he and several of the Bluegrass Cut-Ups lived.
When Labor Day weekend, 1967 rolled around, I was still too young to drive, but I had a relative drop me off with my guitar and sleeping bag at the festival’s new location, at Watermelon Park in Berryville, Virginia. Carlton Haney said that I could sleep in the medical tent behind the stage. He was called away on Saturday to visit his mother in the hospital, leaving Dick Freeland of Rebel Records in charge. Knowing how to find me and that I was a radio DJ, Dick Freeland woke me in the medical tent that morning and asked me to emcee. When Carlton returned that evening, he was impressed that the show was running on time and asked me to emcee his bluegrass and country shows whenever I could be available.
In 1969, he moved the Berryville date up to the Fourth of July weekend and was building Blue Grass Park in Camp Springs, NC for the Labor Day event. That was the summer before I was to start Harvard College in Massachusetts and I finally had a driver’s license and a little red Volkswagen station wagon.
At Berryville, Carlton invited me to spend the rest of the summer at Camp Springs publicizing the new location. I did so, the first of six summers I would spend living at the park and traveling as program director, emcee, and publicist to numerous concerts, festivals, and fiddlers’ conventions for Carlton and other promoters. In 1969, we initiated Muleskinner News magazine as the program for the Camp Springs Festival.
Throughout my college years (September, 1969 to December, 1974) I edited Muleskinner News (Carlton Haney was publisher) and was program director for Carlton Haney’s growing list of bluegrass events at Camp Springs, NC; Berryville, VA; Gettysburg, PA; Lakeland, FL; and Escoheag, RI. I often worked at Carlton’s Country Shindig package shows as well, with artists such as Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard, Porter Wagoner, Dolly Parton, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.
These were experiences that shaped my life and that I will never forget. Although I resigned from direct involvement with the Haney organization when I moved to Dayton, OH in January, 1975 to pursue a full time civic career, I remained close to Carlton, his family, and associates throughout the rest of his life. I suppose I came to know Carlton as well as anyone, and certainly learned a great deal from him. Our skills were complementary, and I believe we made a good team.”
Jesse McReynolds, one half of the first generation bluegrass duo, Jim & Jesse, shares his thoughts ……
“I was sorry to hear the sad news about Carlton Haney’s passing away. Carlton was a great friend of many bluegrass and country artists. He was a promoter of bluegrass music long before it was popular with a lot of people. He will be remembered as the man who dedicated his life to making bluegrass music what it is today.”
“I heard about ‘Shorty’ Haney from Marvin Hedrick soon after we met in 1961. I was twenty-two at the time, a new graduate student at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Marvin lived in Nashville, Indiana. In his mid-thirties, he’d grown up there in Brown County and had been listening to and playing old-time hillbilly music and bluegrass since his youth. He’d been attending the Sunday shows at the Brown County Jamboree, a few miles north of Nashville in Bean Blossom, since it began in the late 1930s.
Marvin held weekly jam sessions in the back room of his radio-TV shop. Between songs he’d talk about his musical experiences. He recalled when Shorty Haney began managing Bill Monroe in 1955, not long after Bill bought the Jamboree. Haney moved into one of the cabins on the Jamboree grounds. He brought in former Blue Grass Boys, creating a house band to back up visiting Jamboree acts and host radio shows broadcast from it. One such musician was Roger Smith, a fiddler and banjo picker from Mount Airy, North Carolina. Haney only stayed as Bill’s manager for about 18 months but Roger Smith settled down and became, some would say the, key figure in advancing bluegrass in Southern Indiana. Long after his brief time in Brown County, Haney was remembered for the impact of his enterprise and energy.
In 1965 Marvin received a flyer in the mail advertising Haney’s Blue Grass Festival at the Cantrell Horse Farm in Fincastle, Virginia, near Roanoke. He made plans to travel there with his family. Carlton advertised the festival far and wide. Mayne Smith wrote me from LA that he’d gotten a grant from UCLA so he could attend and carry on his bluegrass research.
I was tied up with my work at Indiana University and couldn’t go, but the day before the event started, former Blue Grass Boy Sandy Rothman, who was driving to the festival with Jody Stecher and two other young bluegrass musician-fans, knocked on the door of my apartment. They’d come from Berkeley, California, and I think their trip was pretty much a non-stop affair. They were definitely road-weary, but their rest stop at my apartment lasted only four hours. Then they hit the road for Roanoke and the festival.
Later I heard a lot about that first real bluegrass festival — from Marvin, Mayne, Sandy, Ralph Rinzler, and others. I made sure I was there for the next one on Labor Day weekend of 1966. I brought along an Ampex recorder from Indiana University’s Archives of Traditional Music. Ralph had a Nagra recorder from the Smithsonian, and we collaborated to document the entire event on tape for our institutions.
Ralph introduced me to Carlton. What stands out in my memory of our first meeting was the way he welcomed me as a student of bluegrass music. At that time I was working with Bobby and Sonny Osborne to create an Osborne Brothers discography. He was supportive of Mayne, too, who in 1965 had published the first scholarly article on bluegrass.
Carlton had arranged for a live television special about his festival and bluegrass music, featuring some of the festival’s stars, at a Roanoke station. He brought Ralph, Mayne and myself to join him in narrating segments of the show. I spoke about the Osbornes’ high lead trio style, and they illustrated my remarks with performances from their repertoire.
This was the first time I’d ever been asked to speak about bluegrass on television. Carlton’s support and enthusiasm for my work and that of others meant a lot to me. Later in the festival he invited me on stage to speak about my work. I’d been a regular at the Brown County Jamboree for five years, so I spent my time telling about Bean Blossom, and inviting festival-goers to visit it. The following June Bill held his first festival there.
Carlton recognized the depth of our involvement in this music, not just as musicians, but also as enthusiasts, intellectuals, and researchers. Much that we now take from granted today about the world of bluegrass would not have happened without his enthusiasm, his vision, his energy, and his warm welcoming ways.”
CDBaby has long been the entry point for independent artists longing for digital distribution. Creating a CDBaby account would give you the channel for getting your music in iTunes and other online digital download services.
Now CDBaby has launched a new feature that allows for all CDs distributed digitally through them to be available for download directly from them on the artist’s CDBaby page.
This new arrangement does not allow for individual track downloads however. Only full CDs may be purchased for download from CDBaby. The cost is variable depending on the price set by the artist. The download price is the same as the physical CD price.
Even with the lack of individual track downloads, there is much to recommend this new service. A digital CD is downloaded as a zip file containing all tracks in unprotected, high quality (200kbps) MP3 format, a high resolution cover image, and a text file containing the liner notes.
Even better, for the artist who is selling, is that CDBaby only keeps their standard 9% for digital sales. That means an album selling for $9.99 will net the artist $9.09 when sold on CDBaby.com. That same album distributed by CDBaby and sold via iTunes would result in an artist payment of only $6.37.
As an example of what this looks like on the CDBaby website, I’ve chosen On A Farm. It’s the latest CD from the band Acoustic Endeavors, of which our very own John Lawless is the banjo picker.
If you are itching to join the digital download game as an independent artist, CDBaby is making it easier than ever.
WNCW 88.7 FM in NC has posted the results of their online voting for the best releases of 2006. The results take the form of Top 100 Lists starting with a comprehensive list and then broken out into genre specific lists. The Bluegrass list is the better part of the way down the page. It contains only the top 50 releases in the bluegrass genre.
Our very own John Lawless appears on the list at #38. The release is On a Farm from the band of which he’s a part, Acoustic Endeavors.
Each year, the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend holds a faculty concert on the Saturday night of their three day instructional event. It is the only part of the weekend which is open to the general public (not registered to attend the 3 day workshop) and is always a highlight, both for the students and the local bluegrass community.
The concert will be held this year on Saturday, November 11 at 7:30 at the Holiday Inn Roanoke, the site for all the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend activities.
The format is a loose, relaxed jam-like setting, where the many artists are grouped in a variety of configurations – either solo, duo or in groups – with a good mix of vocal and instrumental music. Both the performers and the audience always enjoy the fun, “no pressure” environment as well as the chance to witness or be a part something as potentially spontaneous as this.
The musicians will sometimes not even choose the song they will perform until a few minutes before they go on stage, a sign both of their high level of skill and professionalism, and the sort of fun they have with this show.
Performing on the RBW faculty concert this year are Eddie Adcock, George Shuffler, Roland White, Craig Smith, Don Rigsby, BlueRidge, Jack Lawrence, Bull Harman, Herschel Sizemore, David McLaughlin, Acoustic Endeavors and many others – plus a number of unannounced surprise guests.
When we first got to Nashville on Monday afternoon, Brance and I were able to stop by the studios of XM Satellite Radio’s Bluegrass Junction at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and meet with host Kyle Cantrell. We have corresponded many times with Kyle, and enjoyed having a chance to meet face to face, and speak in person for the first time.
If you were tuned in to Bluegrass Junction on Monday afternoon, you may have heard us on XM with Kyle – a number of readers have written to say that they did. He was kind enough to play several tracks from the new Acoustic Endeavors CD, On A Farm, which he has featured a good bit on XM this year. Kyle also talked with Brance and I about Bluegrass Today, and prompted us to decribe the site and what we do here us to his listeners.
Thanks to Kyle and XM Nashville Executive Producer, Joyce Rizer, for their hospitality. See you guys next month at IBMA!
John Lawless, one of your authors here at Bluegrass Today, will be a guest on streaming Internet radio station WorldWideBluegrass.com today (7/14) at 4:30 p.m. (EDT).
John will join Gracie Muldoon during her Muldoon In The Afternoon program, along with bandmates Warren Amberson and Kelly Green of Acoustic Endeavors. They will surely discuss their new CD, On A Farm, as well as John’s work here on Bluegrass Today.
Listen to the interview live via streaming audio at 4:30 today.
As Apple’s iTunes Music Store has grabbed up a larger segment of the worldwide music purchasing pie, many smaller independent labels and artists have been concerned that their releases would be lost amidst the slick promotion for mainstream pop projects on iTunes. Legal music download sales tripled in 2005 to just over one billion dollars (US), with digital downloads accounting for approximately 6% of all music sales. Online distributors’ catalogs were said to contain more than 2 million tracks at the end of last year, with iTunes commanding a majority of download sales in many markets.
From its inception, Apple has insisted that it wanted to broaden rather than restrict iTunes’ offerings, and initially reached out to smaller labels. Contrary to what many believe, however, Apple does not host the audio files themselves, and smaller labels often were unprepared for the technical aspects of converting files for digital distribution and making them available for iTunes on an appropriate server for download. The larger bluegrass labels (like Rounder, Sugar Hill and Rebel) now have much of their catalog on iTunes, with new projects generally released simultaneously on audio CD and iTunes. Rebel has even begun to make out-of-print titles available for iTunes-only release, a trend we hope will become more widespread.
A number of companies have arisen to assist small labels (and artists) get their music into the digital distribution realm, and iTunes is seeing more and more projects that are independently produced show up in their catalog. CD Baby has been very effective in getting independent projects into iTunes, and a number of wholesale distributors are also getting into this business. Copper Creek Records has indicated that their catalog will soon be available for digital download, and are being assisted in this effort by their primary distributor, Select-O-Hits.
Two artists we found recently on iTunes are friends of Bluegrass Today whose music should appeal to our readers.
Larry Keel has been a prominent fixture on the alternative acoustic scene for some time, though his more recent efforts have been a bit more mainstream bluegrass. His current band, Natural Bridge, has a grassy edge, and one of Larry’s Tunes, Mountain Song, was featured on the previous release from The Del McCoury Band. He now has three projects available to sample or purchase for download from iTunes.
Also up on iTunes are two CDs from Acoustic Endeavors, both their debut release, Coming Of Age… again, and the current On A Farm. Both CDs are made up of all-original material, and feature one of this blog’s authors on banjo.
These are projects that were wholly artist-produced, or by artist-owned independent labels, showing that this sort of release can make its way into such a dominant venue if the artists are diligent and persistent.
