In today’s increasingly competitive media world, it’s both easier and more difficult to get publicity, especially the type that helps performers generate enough consistent income to keep bands together, let alone maintain music as a full-time occupation. This appears particularly difficult […]
Bluegrass, like any musical genre, has its roots deep in the culture that nurtured and grew it. As it grows, it seeks to maintain those roots while remaining alert to its commercial opportunities. But like the rest of the world, emerging […]
In 2012, the Lonely Heartstring Band emerged out of the American Roots Program at Berklee College of Music when the college received a request for a bluegrass band that played Beatles covers to play for a wedding reception. Put together […]
Bluegrass is a musical genre that grew out of white working-class America. It embodies the values and concerns of the people who formed many of the strengths of work, family, and faith that have been features of the American experiment. […]
Zeb Snyder emerged as a fresh guitar talent about a decade ago playing with the Snyder Family Band, consisting of his younger sister Samantha on fiddle, and his father, Bud, playing bass. I first remember seeing him at a now-defunct autumn […]
Some years ago, a leader of a national band hired a new lead singer, whose voice, energy, and personality soon helped to raise the band’s profile. After a while, the band was developing a larger audience while booking better and […]
No one would argue that Darrell Webb hasn’t earned his stripes in traditional bluegrass. He has moved from being a much sought-after sideman in traditional bluegrass settings to establishing himself, in his early 40s, as a solid band leader who has […]
When Ralph Peer’s father, owner of a furniture store in Independence, Missouri, started selling Victrolas in the early 20th century as a sideline, Peer became fascinated with the problem of providing sufficient content to satisfy the demand created by this […]
The innocuous course description helps University of North Carolina students from a variety of liberal arts majors, including music, to meet distribution requirement in their general education program. Drifting through the catalog, a student might look at it, and say, […]
Performing in a major bluegrass band is a grueling business. In order to subsist as a bluegrass musician, a player is often on the road from Thursday through Sunday, frequently appearing at three different events placed hundreds or even thousands of miles […]
