Author: Chris Jones

Last week there was a rerun of my bluegrass rules column, which made for an appropriate setup for this one, which is more about bluegrass laws than rules. We all make jokes about the "bluegrass police," an arm of law enforcement

"I like the rules. I think you know how I feel about that." – Fake Santa in Santa Clause 2 In the 1970s, once bluegrass music had evolved into its own genre, with its own festival circuit, its own record labels,

As promised last week, it's time for what used to be referred to as our "annual new product review." I called it that until people pointed out (in what I thought was a somewhat high-and-mighty tone) that things that are

There will be an upcoming column reviewing the best new bluegrass-related products of the past year, but at the moment I'm still in the testing phase with several of them—right now I'm putting the "Blade Rubber," a banjo player's right

Happy New Year! Was one of your resolutions to become more knowledgable about bluegrass music? Well, I'm afraid I'll be no help there, but if you'd like to start the year knowing how much you already know about it, you'll

Happy post-Christmas/pre-NewYear. I'm spending the holidays in a somewhat remote area of western Canada, where it was necessary to write and send this column in late November, to allow time for it to be delivered by dog sled (with some

I  want to wish you a very merry Christmas coming up this weekend. This is the long-awaited (by almost no one) follow-up to a Christmas Carol-inspired column that ran several years ago about a modern day bluegrass Scrooge, a grouchy,

You can consider this a companion piece to John Lawless' recent article about artificial intelligence and Richard Melling's use of the technology in interviews about bluegrass music. This was just an odd coincidence since I was working on this AI-themed

You know how Christmas traditions get started: just do anything two years in a row, whether it's using a draw system for family gifts or poisoning yourself with expired egg nog, and you're forever obligated to repeat the procedure annually

Are you possibly old enough to remember cigarette advertising on TV and radio? If so you probably also still refer to David Grier as "Lamar Grier's boy," and you might remember who Gerald Ford's vice president was (also Lamar Grier,