All posts tagged: Bluegrass Intelligencer

Bluegrass Hair and Obscene Solos

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 …

How do those bluegrass guys (and gals) play so fast? The true story!

(NOTE from 2021: Since I wrote this post way back in 2008, the website referenced is no longer active. Nonetheless, since it saw some recent traffic, I decided to keep it here as I think you can get the gist of the report from this now-departed Onion-like online site.) Thanks to a heads up from The Bluegrass Blog, I was introduced to the perfect post-convention antidote that puts all the postings from The Daily Kos (or insert your favorite right-wing blog) in perspective. Want to know how all those bluegrass phenoms play so darn fast?  Steroids!  Check out this stunning revelation from the incredibly funny Bluegrass Intelligencer which reports on the government-funded study to uncover rampant performance enhancing drug use among all the major bluegrass bands, including Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder (see photo at top).  As one “fan” put it, “I mean, when you go to a festival and you see Cody Kilby playing those guitar solos with Kentucky Thunder, you know that it’s not naturally possible, yet everyone just looks the other way,” …