One valuable source for my columns is the comments and discussions people write on the various hangouts and forums devoted to bluegrass and acoustic music that I subscribe to, including The Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum and the Mandolin Café. Those […]
One valuable source for my columns is the comments and discussions people write on the various hangouts and forums devoted to bluegrass and acoustic music that I subscribe to, including The Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum and the Mandolin Café. Those […]
Country music in America has long marketed towards and embodied an eclectic blend of common folk: typically, southern, lower-class, God-fearing, hard-working, blue-collar white men, found in Appalachian homes and hollers scattered well beneath the Mason-Dixon line. From the earliest decades […]
Bill Monroe once said in an interview with George Gruhn: “Bluegrass is a pure music. You follow the melody right, and you don’t put in no hot, know-it-all fiddle that don’t belong in there” (Ewing 2006, p. 195). Bluegrass music […]
Bobby Osborne, the 85-year-old singer and mandolinist best known for the bluegrass music he started playing with his brother a half-century ago, has a new record out this week called Original. (Full disclosure: the album was made with the help […]
When you attend a bluegrass event, whether it’s a concert, festival, or local picking party, you never know who you might meet. Most people don’t care who you are or what you do for a living. What they do care about […]
