Author: Chris Stuart

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

This is the first in what I hope will be an occasional series of songwriting challenges to appear in the Blue Yodel column. In every songwriting workshop, one question always gets asked: which comes first, the words or the melody? I try

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

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

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

Janet and I just got back from Sore Fingers Summer School, a bluegrass camp in the Cotswolds in England—affectionately dubbed by Tim O’Brien, Hillbilly Hogwarts. We taught a week-long class on bluegrass harmony to 30 Brits who spent their hard-earned pounds

Let me say up front that this article is not about a night I had on the dance floor in the 80s with the father of bluegrass. It’s about remembering lyrics, but would you have started reading something called “Fun

I will probably remember where I was when I heard of Earl Scruggs’ death as much as where I was on 9/11 or the shuttle Challenger disaster. I was in the kitchen lifting the cutting board out of the drainer. My

I first saw banjoist Ned Luberecki on stage at an IBMA showcase back in the ‘90s. He made a joke that about ten people in the room got and I immediately bonded with him. It took several more decades for us

This is the second part of a St. Patrick’s Day column. Yesterday was an interview with Richard Hawkins, the editor of the Bluegrass Ireland Blog. Today is an interview with Ronnie Norton, a 2012 graduate of Leadership Bluegrass. Ronnie is a Dublin-based