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A new tradition launches here at Bluegrass Today: Chris Stuart's Holiday Poem. Enjoy our 2011 year-in-review, or click below and listen to Chris read it aloud. [http://traffic.libsyn.com/thegrasscast/Holiday_poem_2011.mp3] Dear friends out in the blogosphere, I hope a link has brought you here, To read and pass a pleasant time, Or search your name amongst the [...]
Dear Santa, Before we get to this year’s list, I’d like to clean up a couple of loose ends from 2010. Last year you left me the wrong Homer & Jethro LP. I requested Cool Crazy Christmas; I got Old Crusty Minstrels. Normally, I wouldn’t complain but I already have three copies of that. Also, [...]
Welcome to the new and smarter Mr. Blue Grass Smarty Pants! With this installment we introduce Guest Artist With a Clue, Reader Questions, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, contests, prizes, and actual bluegrass facts. Guest Artist With A Clue Our first guest artist is fiddler extraordinaire Megan Lynch, who has won the Weiser National [...]
Ask Mr. Blue Grass Smarty Pants appears at odd times in Blue Yodel. You can post questions or add comments below and we will make sure Mr. BGSP sees them and replies on what he calls the Wonderful World of Webs. This is his second installment. Dear Mr. BGSP, WIBA? —DDIW Dear DDIW, OMG. ONINFFTOWIBA. [...]
I wish I could sell you something that would make you a better songwriter, but unfortunately, there’s no tablature for songwriters, no string gauges to change if the chorus isn't working, no pearl inlay that will make you look deep into your soul. I did once witness two songwriters argue over the merits of a [...]
While publicly I’m all for big tents that allow more people to be part of (or at least buy a ticket for) this thing we call bluegrass, personally I have a very narrow definition: Bluegrass is whatever Bill Monroe whistled in the shower between 1929 and 1996. This satisfies my two requirements for any definition [...]
[I receive these occasional emails from Porter Mapes, a bluegrass sideman who is living the life, as they say—not edited for spelling, grammar, or facts. I hope to hear more from him.] From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Date: Sep. 3, 2011 Hey Pal, Well, it’s finally happened. I was hired on by the Willett [...]
Ask Mr. Blue Grass Smarty Pants will appear at odd times in the Blue Yodel column. Please send questions and comments to [email protected] for possible use. Dear Mr. Blue Grass Smarty Pants, When was the Blue Grass music discovered and what was it doing before that? —Curious in Georgia Dear Curious in Georgia, The Blue Grass music [...]
As The Bluegrass Blog rolls into Bluegrass Today, I thought I’d take us back to the beginning of the online bluegrass community. Let us recall a simpler time, a time when bluegrass social media meant the letters section of Bluegrass Unlimited, when a land-line was called a phone, and phones were so rare they were [...]
We heard this week from Chris Stuart, west coast singer/songwriter extraordinaire, with some news about his musical endeavors. Primarily, it involves a name change that acknowledges his long-time musical partnership with Janet Beazely, who has played banjo and sang alongside Stuart as a member of Chris Stuart & Backcountry. Chris tells us that henceforth, the [...]
