All posts filed under: Bluegrass Music

Watching the Grammy’s

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Andrew and I have been watching the Grammy Awards show together…a little father/son bonding.  He’s helping me understand the genius of Radiohead and I’m helping him understand why Paul McCartney was such a seminal bassist in pop/rock music.  Seems like a fair trade to me. Of course, the categories I care about never get face time in prime time.  Wouldn’t you have loved to see Dr. John sing from his Grammy award winning City That Care Forgot album?  I know that they had to bring out Lil Wayne for the masses as part of their New Orleans tribute, and it was good to see Allen Toussaint, so I’ll take what I can.  Thank God some people still care about New Orleans.  In the Bluegrass category, Ricky Skaggs won for the terrific Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass, while banjo player Bela Fleck won best pop instrumental album.  (Isn’t this the category that would have included Walk Don’t Run and other pop instrumental classics?  That’ll teach all those folks who make banjo jokes!) In the folk category, …

Shuffling Off to…the Swim Meet

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Today I took some time off to serve as a timer at the swim meet for Andrew’s school.  I do this every now and then to make sure I connect with that part of Andrew’s life during the school year, and because every parent needs to volunteer to make these meets work.  It was great fun and Andrew dropped time in all his races.  I even got to time him in the 500, when he beat his personal best.  What fun. But this post isn’t about swim meets and getting your pants wet (which I did .  Those high school boys come in hard for the touch at the end.)  Nope, this post is about why I love the Shuffle feature on the iPod. I have about 3,500 songs or so on my iPod.  About 2,400 of them are in one playlist that I call “Americana.”  That’s where I dump in all my albums and iTunes purchases that have anything to do with bluegrass, acoustic music, country rock, Americana, blues, you name it.  I can go …

Live at McCabe’s

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I am in Santa Monica, California, for a set of meetings.  For most people, when they think of Santa Monica they think of the beautiful beach and the restored Santa Monica Pier, with its historic carousel and the great Ferris wheel that lights up the night sky.  Those things are all pretty wonderful, but when flatpickers come to Santa Monica they think of Live at McCabe’s. Back in the 1970s, Norman Blake was making his first west coast appearance and he recorded an album at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, which is located on Pico Boulevard here in Santa Monica.  It is a wonderful album for several reasons, but most of all because it showcases Blake’s incredible guitar flatpicking skills.  For those who’ve only heard Blake on O Brother Where Art Thou or on his later albums, there’s always a wonder – as others have noted – at how Blake came to be mentioned among the first guitar greats in the same breath with Doc Watson, Dan Crary, and Clarence White.  When you listen to Live at …

O’Connor, Fleck to Play Inauguration Event

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Thanks to the Bluegrass Blog for passing along the news that Mark O’Connor and Bela Fleck will be playing next Monday at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower’s Theatre as part of the Let Freedom Swing concert.  The evening’s program of jazz music is in honor of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and in anticipation of the inauguration the next day of President-elect Barack Obama.  While O’Connor and Fleck made their name in bluegrass, they routinely cross musical genres and have the musical chops to join host Wynton Marsalis. While tickets are by invitation only, the event is to be televised, so be on the lookout for this mix of terrific musicians. More to come… DJB

Baseball, Blues, and Bluegrass – Do Christmas Gifts Get Any Better?

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In the midst of a strong recession, everyone expected downsizing in holiday gift giving.  But the generosity of family and friends showed me that downsizing can still result in gifts that touch the heart. My colleague Dolores shares my passion for baseball, so her gift of Obsessed with Baseball was perfect.   This is Jeopardy for the baseball set…2500 questions that the electronic widget embedded in the book asks you to answer.  For instance – to take a random example – Question 54:  Who led the majors in RBIs in 2006?  A.  David Ortiz, B. Albert Pujols,  C. Ryan Howard, or D. Lance Berkman.  If you typed in “C” for Ryan Howard, the widget tells you “correct” and you are 1 for 1 or 100% correct.  It is easy to spend all day answering questions about Heavy Hitters, Hall of Fame, The Playoffs, and more. Want to try another one?  Question 1505:  Name the future big-league manager who hit 30 or more home runs 11 times in his 21 season playing career.  A.  Gil Hodges, B. Frank Robinson, C. …

David Grier at IMT

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All of David Grier’s guitar skills were on display tonight at the Monday evening concert of the Institute of Musical Tradition in Rockville.  Greir opened with a spirited version of Durham’s Bull, an old fiddle tune (and afterwards opined that all fiddle tunes are described as “old”), and then put on a two-hour tour de force of flatpicked guitar and bad jokes. It is a tall order to keep an audience’s interest with two hours of solo flatpicked guitar, but Grier made it look easy.  With equal measures original tunes and flatpicking chestnuts – with the occasional popular tune such as Yesterday thrown in as well – Grier showed why he’s one of the best flatpickers on the planet.  This was an evening of highlights:  the beautiful intro for Red Haired Boy, the original waltz High Atop Princess Cove, and the Stephen Foster tune Angeline the Baker among them.  One of Grier’s best recorded efforts is the Bill Monroe tune Old Ebenezer Scrooge, which he worked as a duet with bassist Todd Phillips on the Grammy award winning True Life …

There’s at least one good story in today’s Wall Street Journal

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On the day the stock market fell another 678 points, the only good story I could find in today’s Wall Street Journal was on Dobro God Jerry Douglas.  Entitled:  Jerry Douglas:  Irreplaceable Instrumentalist, it is a nice feature on how Douglas thinks like a vocalist when he plays.  The article also has Douglas’ take on why so many young bluegrassers expand their playing into more jazz-oriented music:  Bluegrass is such a chops-oriented music. It builds stamina and strength in your hands because it’s such a physical music, so hard-driving. And you have to stay up; you can’t just play half the song. Sometimes it seems like it’s an endurance test to see who can play fastest the longest! And with that training, you can go just about anywhere else, because you’ve already played all those notes in rapid succession. Thanks to the irreplaceable Bluegrass Blog for highlighting this story on an otherwise dreary news day. More to come… DJB

Beauty in Metal

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About 15 years ago, my younger brother Joe left his corporate job to work full time as a blacksmith artist.  It was a gutsy move, but he’s loving life and never looked back.  Over that time, he’s matured as an artist and has received increasing publicity.  So I was pleased but not surprised when I was looking online and found this Nashville Public Television blog for the Tennessee Crossroads  program where my brother’s work was featured. For those in the Nashville area, the show airs on October 9th and 12th, but anyone can see the clip by watching the video at the NPT website.  It is a good piece, but any short television feature isn’t going to capture the fundamental niceness that’s at the core of Joe’s being.  He’s simply among the nicest people on the planet and he’d give you the shirt off his back.  I’m looking forward to seeing Joe and his family next month when I’m in Tennessee.  Maybe it will be warm enough to sit on that wonderful front porch of his and pick some …

David Lindley featured in new Fretboard Journal

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Regular readers of More to Come… will know that one of my favorite magazines is The Fretboard Journal, which bills itself as “Not Just Another Guitar Magazine.”  The Fall 2008 issue showed up in the mailbox the other day, and it contains more great articles and photos of the world’s most beautiful acoustic guitars.  Multi-instrumentalist David Lindley is featured in an extensive interview with Ben Harper, while banjoist Tony Trischka talks about the banjo as the great antidepressant.  That article begins with a great quote from Pete Stampfel, banjoist in the Holy Modal Rounders, the anarchist folk group from the 1960s: “The real reason the Great Depression happened was that people quit playing the banjo.” An interesting thought for the day when the Stock Market dropped 777 points. More to come… DJB