Opinion / Humor

People that are new to bluegrass music sometimes need some help in translating our jargon. Hearing that someone is "tearing it up on the five" may sound like ordinary and recognizable information to us, but to the uninitiated, it's not

I'll admit that, perhaps because of my radio day job, I listen more intently than I should to radio advertising. I'm especially drawn to those featuring contrived conversations: "You mean you really get cash back on every gas purchase?!" "Yes I do." "Wow!

This is my 500th column for Bluegrass Today. This has taken me a little by surprise; I thought I had run out of ideas by column 50, and perhaps I had. But somehow, even if running on fumes and a

The IBMA is in the midst of a membership drive which has been christened, "Catch the Bluegrass Wave." Before going any further I want to encourage you to become a member of this organization that continues to do great work advancing

We have an annual(ish) tradition here, which is to compile some of bluegrass music's most uninteresting stories of the past year, after which I try to narrow them down to five that really stand out as yawn-inducers. Why do we do

Last week we unveiled some of the bluegrass laws contained in recently discovered ancient scrolls from 1978. So as not overwhelm you with legalism, we've broken this up into two segments. I shall now, slowly, open the second seal, which

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