From The Side of the Road… go on, tell the truth!
We’re into the cold and dark part of the year, which goes along with the quiet part of the touring season. Since it’s also a time of reflecting back on the previous business year, I wanted to open on a personal note: I feel grateful for the fact that this past year was the best […]
From The Side off the Road… warning labels for bluegrass songs
Someone recently suggested to me that bluegrass music is every bit as violent as uncensored hip hop, especially towards women, and that bluegrass recordings should have parental warning stickers on them. I replied that I thought that was ridiculous. How could that be? Bluegrass music sounds so happy. It must be wholesome. We have adorable […]
From The Side of the Road… annual Bluegrass Quiz for 2024!
Happy New Year, friends and readers! 2024 is here at last. It’s one of those special every four years in the cycle leap years: you know, the ones with the extra day in February, the summer Olympics, and a US presidential election. Does it strike fear in your heart? An extra day in February often […]
From The Side of the Road… New Year’s Rulin’s for 2024
Peter Thompson, noted California bluegrass DJ and former concert organizer, recently e-mailed out a copy of Woody Guthrie’s New Years resolutions from 1942, which Woody called “New Years Rulin’s.” It was a long list, with 33 items on it, and had wonderful little illustrations to go with each resolution. It was lengthy enough, I was […]
From The Side of the Road… bluegrass bandleader gift ideas
This is it: the home stretch of the holiday shopping season is upon us. If you’re reading this when it first hit the Bluegrass Today front page on Wednesday (morning edition), there are five more shopping days until Christmas, counting this one. By the way, what that means is there are five more days until […]
From The Side of the Road… Mary and Joseph
Bluegrass bands face an annual challenge at this festive time of the year. And no, I don’t mean the challenge of coming up with money to buy gifts when your band isn’t working at all. Though it is a traditional time of seasonal unemployment for many bluegrass acts, for those who do get a Christmas-oriented […]
From The Side of the Road… another dose of bluegrass Hallmark Christmas movies
It’s that time of year again: time for the annual Hallmark barrage of Christmas movies. In fact, it’s been that time of year since October. By the time we hit the fourth Sunday in Advent, Hallmark will have fixed up every handsome widower/single father/architect-turned-rustic-inn-owner with every single ambitious event planner-who-no-longer-has-time-for-Christmas in the entire world. This […]
From The Side of the Road… bluegrass records that really count
Whatever the future makeup of the IBMA Board of Directors might be in an ideal world (heaven), whether it have 16 members or 5 members, whether it be human, or run by AI bots who play a little banjo on the side, there’s something I really wish its members would consider (because of course they […]
From The Side of the Road… happy turkey day!
This being the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you would naturally be expecting a Thanksgiving-y column, perhaps a list of bluegrass things to be thankful for, e.g. “I’m thankful for my Blue Chip TPR 45,” or “I’m thankful for Jimmy Martin’s lead singing on On and On“. Or I could have issued the usual Thanksgiving warnings: don’t […]
From The Side of the Road… bluegrass bandleader apps
One of the most important cliche phrases of the current decade, aside from “drink the Kool-aid,” “going forward,” and, from the world of television news: “at the end of the day,” is “there’s an app for that.” We now have apps that call cabs for us, track and allow us to rate every beer we […]
