All posts filed under: Bluegrass Music

I grew up with Flatt & Scruggs and WSM’s Martha White show on the radio every morning, but truly went down the rabbit hole the first time I placed the needle on side 1 / track 1 of the “Circle” album

Good Roots Music On the Web

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Even on vacation I can’t spend all my time enjoying the beauty of the river.  So I went online this morning and came across one new roots music blog and was reminded of another old favorite.  I thought I’d share them with you. The new find is called Fiddlefreak Folk Music Blog, written by a musician and artist on the west coast named Stuart Mason.  I found his recent post on singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz to be a great introduction to someone who seems worth checking out – just as his blog promised.  Visit the site and see if you find some new music that’s worth exploring. The old favorite is the website No Depression, which is the online version of the late and lamented magazine of the same name.  (The title is taken from the 1930s Carter Family tune, They’ll Be No Depression in Heaven, which could be just as appropriate in 2009.)   No Depression was a great magazine covering the broad area called Americana, alt-country, or roots music.  That tradition is bravely carried …

Mike Seeger Passes Away

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I was saddened to read in today’s Bluegrass Blog of the passing of roots musician extraordinaire Mike Seeger. Half-brother to the more famous Pete Seeger, Mike was one of those people who loved old-time music and the people who played it.  He was a great musical scholar who worked to expand the audience for American roots music.  I had the chance to hear him play live on a couple of occasions after he moved to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and he was just one of the giants in the field. I found this wonderful clip on You Tube of Seeger talking about – and then playing – Elizabeth Cotten’s classic Freight Train. Rest in peace. More to come… DJB P.S.  – An update:  Here’s the posting on Seeger from the always informative, The Music’s Over But the Songs Live On blog.

Bluegrass in Nashville

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There’s an interesting article in last Monday’s Washington Post about bluegrass music venues in Nashville.  For those who live in the city, this report is old news.  For many of my friends and colleagues coming to Nashville in the fall, however, this will be important information you’ll want to tuck away for those times in between conference sessions.  If you want to find bluegass music in Nashville, you’ll want to visit places like the Ryman Auditorium and the Station Inn. At the top of this post, you’ll see an old black-and-white photo of the author – in his college days – playing some bluegrass very near Nashville with good friends:  banjo-picker John Balch and singer Jody Kammerud.  Thought it would be fun to see those Tennessee pickers in their youth! The article mentions the family band Cherryholmes.  Enjoy the video of the band. More to come… DJB

Five in a Row Too Much to Ask of Nats

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After an amazing streak where the Nats won four in a row from the big bad American League East – including a shutout against the Yankees and two walk-off wins in extra innings against the Blue Jays – they reverted to form today in losing 9-4 in front of a Father’s Day crowd that included the Browns.  Yes, Andrew and Claire sprung for Nat’s tickets for the old man (well, there’s more to the story which I’ll get to in a moment) and we all went for a day of baseball and fried food at Nationals Park. Even the Nats reverting to their old ways of bad starting pitching, bad relief pitching, and untimely disappearances at key moments by the team’s 3-4-5 hitters couldn’t put a damper on a very nice Father’s Day weekend. I saw my “celebration” of Father’s Day actually beginning on Friday, when Andrew did some community service work at the Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic and then met up with Claire for time with friends.   I picked them up on Friday evening and …

Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman

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Next week begins the summer Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman series at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.  Known as the Mother Church of Country Music and the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 through 1974, the Ryman bills this series with the line, “Experience the best in bluegrass on the very stage where bluegrass was born over 60 years ago.”  That would be the evening where Earl Scruggs stepped on stage with Bill Monroe.  Here’s how Richard D. Smith describes that night in Can’t You Hear Me Callin’:  The Life of Bill Monroe: For Earl’s first night on the Opry, Monroe picked out a fast number that would show off the newcomer’s dazzling style – “White House Blues,” an old song recounting the 1901 William McKinley assassination.  It was a perfect selection.  Scruggs stepped up to the microphone with apprehension, knowing that nothing like this had been heard to date on the Opry or even over WSM radio. Use to the banjo as a country comedian’s prop, or hearing it picked or strummed in …

Bluegrass Hair and Obscene Solos

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The bluegrass world’s answer to the satirical paper The Onion – the always off-kilter Bluegrass Intelligencer – is at it again with several not-to-be-believed posts from the world of roots music. In the wake of last weekend’s DelFest Bluegrass Festival and bad weather in the mid-Atlantic region, BI’s intrepid staff reports on how rain, hail, and gale-force winds could not dislodge the “bluegrass hair” of the host Del McCoury band. As reported by BI online: On Saturday, an unfortunate combination of gale force wind, torrential rain, powerful lightning, and crushing downfalls of hail rocked DelFest, the popular musical event hosted by the Del McCoury Band. Importantly, the relentless onslaught of life-threatening weather was not sufficient to disturb the hair of anyone in the McCoury family. Another BI post reported on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that a solo by  guitarist extraordinarie Bryan Sutton was “pornographic and obscene.”   What, you didn’t hear about that one from Nina Totenberg?  Well, the NPR legal affairs reporter can’t be expected to catch everything.  That’s why we depend on the …

Matt Flinner’s Music du Jour Satisfies

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The Matt Flinner Trio’s Music du Jour is another in a string of strong new releases this year from Alison Brown’s Compass Records.    Flinner is one of the country’s top mandolin players, heard in recent years with David Grier and super bassist Todd Phillips as well as with Missy Raines and the New Hip. In 2006, Flinner’s trio (Finner on mandolin, Eric Thorin on bass, and Ross Martin on guitar) began to perform what they termed “Music du Jour” tours.  Each band member agreed to write new music to be performed that evening.  The only rule:  the music be started, completed, and performed all in one day.  I’ll let the website Jazz News pick it up from there: The players continued with their daily musical challenge, giving birth to the concept of the “Music du Jour” tours and later the Music du Jour album (out now on Compass Records). Between Flinner, Ross, and Thorin, over sixty new tunes were composed during three western U.S. tours, and in December 2008 the trio committed the twelve best to …

Searching and Finding More to Come…

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So you went to Google, typed in a search term and found this blog called More to Come…  Here, dear readers, are the most popular terms that have brought visitors to this corner of the blogosphere. Farnsworth House – Virtually every day I have at least one visitor seeking out information about this architectural icon.  Back in 2008, I wrote a post based on my day job where I updated friends and family on the flooding at the world famous Farnsworth House.  Since my employer – the National Trust for Historic Preservation – has owned the Farnsworth House (operated by our partners at Landmarks Illinois) it has had two major floods.  Seems those 100-year floods come more frequently than they use to!  If you want to read more about the flooding at the house – or just learn more about this architectural masterpiece – check out the PreservationNation.org site. Good Places to Raise Children – Six months ago, Business Week magazine named my home town – Murfreesboro, Tennessee – as one of the top places …

Different Views of Merlefest

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MerleFest is so big, with 14 active stages over four days, that perspectives on the festival can differ widely.  Two regular bluegrass bloggers have posted entertaining and informative stories about their MerleFest experiences in 2009 that I encourage you to check out. When I started More to Come…one of the first posts was about a show of the Lovell Sisters, and one of my first comments came from Dr. Tom Bibey.  Since then I’ve regularly checked out his Stories of the Bluegrass Road blog, and was pleased to see that he was posting from MerleFest.  This was the first year out of my four at MerleFest that I missed Mandomania, so I was glad to read Dr. Bibey’s update on this annual tradition:  the Creekside Stage filled with mandolin players all supported by one guitarist.  Check out Stories of the Bluegrass Road for a good read. The most extensive reporting on MerleFest I’ve come across is from the alliterative Ted Lehmann’s Bluegrass, Books, and Brainstorms blog.  As you’d expect from a retired English teacher, Lehmann’s blog …