Skip to content
This is the last of a four-part series on practicing. I hope you enjoyed the thoughts of Ron Block, Bryan Sutton, Matt Glazer, and Alan Munde. I like listening to people who are dedicated to their craft and who haven’t lost sight of the fact that putting your fingers in the right place at the [...]
Evidence continues to mount on the value of a college education for young bluegrass musicians. As recent graduates from the handful of programs that focus on bluegrass find jobs with touring artists, or release strong new projects, the case just gets stronger. Today's exhibit is Luke Shamblin, a 2010 graduate of Glenville State College in West [...]
As a songwriter, I get a lot of people who come up and ask how I write such horrendous tripe and pass it off as music. Where does the gift of garble come from? And is there money in it? The American Society for Crap Artists Produce has estimated there are 31.9 bad songs written [...]
Guest Trivia Master – Bill Evans This month’s guest is banjo maven Bill Evans, who again received second-place in the Most Famous Bill Evans in the World contest at the People Named Bill Evans conference held annually in Evansville, Indiana. (There is some reason for hope that next year he’ll take top prize. When the [...]
I hate lists. I have a to-do list that always seems to have the same ten items on it. It’s not so much a to-do list as a never-do list. What I do: I’ll do something, then write it down on my to-do list and immediately cross it out. Meanwhile, the same ten things that [...]
Inertia: (noun) The resistance of any object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change. Wikipedia, p. 39,537,435. Further evidence of an IBMA conspiracy to promote bluegrass came to light last week when the organization sent out a press release describing something called [...]
You may remember a scene from perhaps the best baseball movie ever made, Bull Durham. (Come on, Field of Dreams? Not even top ten.) Crash Davis, played by Kevin Costner, is the aging catcher who gives advice to the rookie phenom, Ebby Calvin LaLoosh, played by Tim Robbins: Crash Davis: It’s time to work on [...]
[I receive these occasional emails from Porter Mapes, a bluegrass sideman living the life. The previous batch was posted in Blue Yodel #3.] From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Date: June 23, 2012 Hey Pal, Sorry it’s been so long since I wrote, but it’s not like I got a lot of free time like I [...]
In the past few weeks, my daughter graduated from college and my son graduated from high school. I say this with a great deal of pride, but also with a certain sadness at how quickly life goes by—quickly, that is, compared with the snail’s march of commencement speeches. And I’m talking about a snail with [...]
Guest Trivia Master – Matt Glaser This month’s guest is a big shot fiddle player, who—it says on his bio—was originally inspired to play fiddle from “watching a corn chip commercial.” Come on, I mean, it was Fritos, right Matt? You were inspired by Fritos. Okay, not Fritos, but the music in the background. So [...]
