The first class isn’t expected to be enrolled until the fall of 2007, but planning, curriculum development and staff and faculty hiring are already underway for a new two year bluegrass music program to be offered at the Hazard Community and Technical College in Hyden KY. It is not an accident that this particular campus was chosen to house the new Bluegrass and Traditional Music Program, as Hyden is known to the founders of this program as the home of bluegrass legends, The Osborne Brothers.

The Mission Statement for the new program states their vision and their purpose:

We are dedicated to the study, performance, preservation, promotion and advancement of heritage music based in the cultural traditions of Kentucky and the Appalachian mountains.

Completion of this two year course will culminate in an AAS Professional Studio Artist degree, and is designed to prepare students for transfer to a four year Fine Arts or Liberal Arts major, or to show employment qualifications in music performance, recording, technology or business with a specialization in traditional music forms.

The HCTC web site doesn’t seem to have much information up at this time, but you can contact Tim Glotzbach, Dean of Heritage/Humanities at 606-487-3407, or reach Evelyn Wood, Public Relations Director at HCTC by email for more details.

Butch Baldassari has announced that he is experimenting with realtime mandolin lessons over the internet via webcasting. He’s planning both private and group lessons and will be hosting the sessions from his teaching facility in Nashville, TN using MSN-Messenger. To participate, students would need broadband internet access. In addition, standard notation and tablature will be available via e-mail in pdf format.

Butch is excited about the possibilities of such a venture.

I’m trying to increase my student base which hopefully would become international…i might wind up teaching @ 4AM…who knows.

Currently he is working with a number of test students to try out the service, and hopes to launch in late March/early April of 2006.

If you are interested in such lessons, you should contact Butch via his website SoundArtRecordings.com.

It seems that these notes about bluegrass artists creating pages on MySpace.com are becoming a regular occurrence. Find our previous posts with info on bluegrass artist MySpace pages here.

Tim Stafford just contacted us to mention that he has a personal artist site, and a Blue Highway band space now up on MySpace.com.

Kip Martin, a noted DC-area bass player, founder of the DC Bluegrass Union, and occasional correspondent for The Bluegrass Blog also has a presence on MySpace.

MySpace.com has been heavily promoting their extensive membership base, boasting of more than 50 million registered users of the web-based community. A recent article in Web Pro News, however, suggests that the actual number of regular users may be much smaller. The author, David A. Utter, speculates that this “smaller number” may be 8-10 million visitors who log on at least once a week, which is still a fairly impressive number.

The site is especially popular with teen and college aged internet users, and the enduring advertiser interest in this demographic may be a primary reason for the attention MySpace.com is receiving from major media players.

Rebel Records announced on Friday (2/24) that their entire catalog is now available for digital download from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Every current, in-print release can be purchased via iTunes, as well as a few out of print titles. Rebel plans to make more out of print titles available on the iTunes Music Store, including some early Ralph Stanley albums, by later this spring.

We’ll be sure to update wth more details as we get them.

Blue Ridge Gazette is a new blog recently launched to foster interest and raise awareness of the beauty, history, people and arts of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A recent entry features longtime Blue Ridge resident Sammy Shelor - of Lonesome River Band fame - and his wife, Sue. The article offers a brief history of Sammy’s involvement in bluegrass music, and how he and Sue met and were married, but is primarily focused on Sue’s arts business, Mountain Meadow Crafts. She and Sam have become deeply involved in The Crooked Road project, another effort to celebrate the unique musical and cultural contributions this part of the United States has added to our lives, and Sue’s arts and crafts market is located on this Crooked Road trail.

Read the piece on Sammy and Sue here.

Due from CMH Records on March 14, 2006 is a second volume of bluegrass tribute tracks from the songs of The Dixie Chicks. The new CD, entitled Pickin’ On The Dixie Chicks Volume 2 - A Bluegrass Tribute, contains grassified instrumental versions of 11 Chix favorites, like White Trash Wedding, Landslide, Goodbye Earl, More Love, plus a bonus track - a song written by the artists on the CD as their own Dixie Chicks tribute, called From Under the Kitchen.

This CD features a number of noted bluegrass pickers, with Scott Vestal on banjo, Ashby Frank on mandolin, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Andy Hall on dobro, and Keith Sewell on guitar.

A previous Dixie Chicks tribute CD was released by CMH in October of 2005, which contains bluegrass instrumental versions of some of their earlier recordings.

We got a note from Randy Culler with Bluegrass & Beyond that their debut CD, Livin’ A Dream, is now available. The band is based in Southwest VA/Northwest NC and they specialize in traditional bluegrass and gospel music.

Audio samples are available on the h Bluegrass & Beyond web site.

A quick birthday wish goes out to Pete Wernick, aka Dr. Banjo, who turns 60 today (2/25/06). It’s a major milestone - congrats, Pete!

UPDATE: We just received a note from Jeanie Stanley about another bluegrass “doctor” celebrating a birthday today.

“February 25 is Dr. Ralph Stanley’s 79th birthday. Dec. 1, 2006, is the 40th anniversary of my father, Carter Stanley’s, passing.

Godspeed to all those who love and play bluegrass music.”

Episode #17 of The GrassCast features two interviews. The first is with singer Alecia Nugent. We talk about her new CD A Little Girl…A Big Four Lane. The second interview is with The Lovell Sisters. We talk with all three sisters about their CD as well as their journey to bluegrass.

This GrassCast is 13 minutes in length and the file download size is 12MB.

Listen now:
Direct Download: ep17_nugent_lovell.mp3
Subscribe with:
Free Download: The GrassCast iPodder software

To subscribe with your own podcatching software, copy and past this url into the appropriate entry box in your software: http://www.thegrasscast.com/rss

NOTE: This post is open to comments, so please share your thoughts about this episode here. Also feel free to share with us your thoughts about The GrassCast in general.

Following up on a post from earlier this week…

We have heard from a few other bluegrass bands who have created a home on MySpace.com. Blue Moon Rising and 3 Fox Drive can both be found on this hugely popular network. We also found MySpace pages for GHS Strings, banjo picker Ned Luberecki, The Chapmans, Pete Wernick, and podcasting superstar Wichita Rutherford.

Starting March 5, 2006, the popular syndicated bluegrass radio program Into The Blue will expand to three hours. The show is hosted by Terry Herd, and aired by 180 affiliates in 36 states, with affiliate stations placing the show in a variety of time slots as best suits their programming mix. Like many syndicated radio programs (music, talk, sports), Into The Blue is offered to commercial stations on a barter basis, meaning that affiliate stations can receive the show in exchange for part of their commercial air time, leaving part of the time free for their own ads.

Herd has been a figure of prominence in bluegrass music and radio for some time, an is credited by many as as pioneer in bringing bluegrass programming into the commercial radio sphere. He founded Bluegrass Radio Network - the company that owns and produces the show - in 1992, and has served as a member of the IBMA Board of Directors and chaired its marketing committee. He has also received the IBMA’s Broadcaster of the Year award four times.

The Huber banjos web site has just been updated with information on their latest addition - the Sammy Shelor signature model banjo. This new Huber is based on a prized pre war, style 75 banjo that Sammy owns, built using the same double cut headstock shape and distinctive “Birds & Bows” inlay pattern as the original 1930s vintage banjo, but made with a wider, radiused fingerboard as per Sammy’s preference.

The Shelor model uses a mahogany neck and resonator, much like the custom Huber Lancaster model Sammy had been playing of late. It is constructed with the same components, and assembled with the same attention to detail that has made Huber such a popular choice among banjo players in recent years, and sells for $4350. More details can be found on the Huber site.

“The new Huber ‘SS’ model is without a doubt the best banjo I have ever played without 65 years of age on it. It looks, plays, and sounds like my original 75. It kills!”

Sammy used his new signature model Huber to record a number of tracks with the newly reorganized Lonesome River Band, and they are available for free download on the band’s web site (quick, free registration required to access the audio).

Anyone who caught the James King Band performance at SPBGMA earlier this month in Nashville enjoyed seeing bluegrass legend Curly Seckler join them on stage. We have recently learned that Curly will also be a guest vocalist on the next James King CD on Rounder Records.

Curly has a relatively new CD of his own on Copper Creek Records, which features many of his original songs recorded with some of the biggest names in bluegrass music.

The East Coast Music Association’s annual conference, which begins today and runs through Monday (2/27) in Charlottetown, PEI, is Eastern Canada’s annual celebration of the music and the artists of Atlantic Canada. In its 17th year, the ECMA Awards show is the culmination of the event, with awards handed out in more than 35 categories. The Thursday-Sunday music industry conference includes a variety of seminars, workshops, showcases and concert performances, and is designed to foster the sort of networking among music industry professionals that is the hallmark of this sort of event in any niche market.

This year, bluegrass music will be formally represented for the first time when the Eastern Canadian Bluegrass Stage debuts on Saturday, February 25. The stage will feature performances and jamming on both Saturday and Sunday evening, held at St. Paul”s Anglican Church in Charlottetown. This is an ECMA partnered stage event, meaning that the bluegrass stage is considered to be part of the official ECMA schedule.

Serge Bernard with Diamond Productions explains how this came to be.

“The East Coast Music Association implemented a positive new policy wherein individuals or organizations can submit a proposal to produce a unique stage event representative of East Coast Music. It must follow their standards in all aspects as if it was a genuine ECMA stage (e.g.., that a jury panel was required to select the performers that would appear). The show then is ‘included’ alongside, and on virtually equal footing, with other ECMA events.”

The venture is jointly sponsored by the PEI Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Festival,Red Clay Bluegrass Festival, Evangeline Bluegrass and Traditional Music Festival, and other regional events, individuals and societies, and produced by Diamond Productions PEI. Eight Maritime bluegrass bands will be performing, mixed between established and up-and-coming acts, and with a few making their first ECMA appearance. They include past ECMA award recipients Birchmountain Bluegrass Band, along with Grassfire from Nova Scotia; The Douthwrights, Dan Cunningham, Windy Creek, Rising Tide Band and True Blue from New Brunswick; Wayne Brown & Friends from PEI, along with ECMA nominees Janet McGarry and Bluestreak, also from PEI. (more…)

We just heard from Eric Gibson of The Gibson Brothers, that their new Sugar Hill project, Red Letter Day, debuted on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart at #5 in its second week of release. The CD is also climbing on the Americana Music Chart, up to #9 this week.

Eric mentioned that they shot their first music video (for I Got A Woman) in the past few weeks, and have been traveling all over the US in support of the new CD.

He also shared this tidbit:

“I love the blog and read it everyday that I can get to a computer.

Thanks Eric - we love it when you talk that way!

Celebration Of Life is the title of an upcoming two CD release from Skaggs Family Records to benefit the St. Jude Children”s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. It is a live recording from the Musicians Against Childhood Cancer festival, and like the performances at the festival itself, the artists on the CD have donated their music so that 100% of the net proceeds can be given to the folks at St. Jude.

The 37 tracks include offerings from the biggest names in bluegrass, plus some unique groupings of artists from different bands. Starting with 3 Fox Drive’s rendition of The Star Spangled Banner through Tony Rice’s powerful guitar arrangement of Shenandoah, the listener will be treated to the work of 139 different musicians who have given of their time and talents for this cause.

Major contributors on the CDs include: Rhonda Vincent, BlueRidge, Marty Raybon, Ronnie Bowman, Blue Highway, Randy Kohrs, IIIrd Tyme Out, Seldom Scene, Lonesome River Band, James King, Kenny & Amanda Smith, The Grascals, Larry Cordle, Dan Tyminski, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Bryan Sutton, Alecia Nugent, Don Rigsby and many others.

The folks at Skaggs Family Records are proud to play a part in this special benefit project, and give particular credit to Darrel Adkins, who personal family tragedy brought the Columbus, OH festival where the project was recorded into existence.

“Darrel Adkins and his family are the founders of the non-profit organization; their daughter Mandy received treatment at St. Jude but unfortunately lost the battle at age 21. “

Celebration Of Life is set to be released in April of 2006, and will available through many popular music resellers, and the Skaggs Family web site. No audio samples available yet, but we will post more details as the release date draws near.

Marty Stuart, who just released a live bluegrass CD, will be featured on Great American Country’s “GAC Classic,” this evening, Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 10 a.m. (ET). Stuart will telling some amazing tales of his life in the music business.

“From the first time I played with Lester Flatt, I sensed an extreme amount of history around me,” Stuart said. It’s no surprise, then, that Stuart has been a collector of country music memorabilia for as long as he can remember. “The first things I acquired were guitars and costumes,” he said. “Nobody in Nashville was really paying attention to the old Nudie suits; people basically were ashamed of that image and they were being sold and pawned.”

Be sure to tune in and give it a listen.

Previous:
Marty Stuart - Live At The Ryman

Rhonda Vincent now has photos up on her website from her recent Mexican Riviera Bluegrass Cruise. Just visit her website and click on “2006 Bluegrass Cruise Photos Updated Daily!” in the upper right hand corner. There are six pages of photos, one from each day of the cruise. Looks like fun!

Gracie Muldoon, one of our regular correspondents and a popular Internet bluegrass cybercaster, responded to our post last week about Nothin’ Fancy on MySpace.com.???She wanted to let us know that a good many bluegrass bands had pages there, and that she had one herself as well.

Some of the other bluegrass acts she mentioned as having MySpace sites are The Grascals, Valerie Smith, Uncle Earl, Nickel Creek, Sam Bush, Donna Hughes, Tony Rice, Wildfire, John Cowan, Dan Tyminski, King Wilkie, Phil Leadbetter, and The Chapmans.

Some of these artist sites have audio and video, all have tours dates and artist bio, and all allow for other MySpace users to leave comments and link together as “Friends” - the term used on MySpace for linking between user pages.

I’m sure there are other artists with spaces on their network, and a bit of snooping on MySpace.com should turn them up.

Orrin Star just wrote in to let us know that he is heading to the west coast this week for a 12-day solo California tour. Once described as “Arlo Guthrie-meets-Doc Watson”, Star was the 1976 National Flatpicking Champion, has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, and boasts a repertoire that ranges from from bluegrass standards to little-known folk gems, Celtic fiddle tunes to fingerstyle blues. Orrin is a great performer and teacher. If you live close to one of these gigs, don’t miss this chance to see him.

Orrin Star - Winter California Tour

Friday 2/24 AGOURA HILLS
Gateway Church, 8pm, 29646 Agoura Rd., email: jackpeters55@yahoo.com
Plus Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar Workshop there 11am-1pm next am.

Saturday Feb 25 SAN DIEGO
Clarke House Concerts, 8:00pm
619-291-4954 or email: stringmusic@gmail.com

Sunday Feb 26th SAN DIEGO
Acoustic Expressions Music Store, 2852 University 619-280-9035
Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar Workshop 11am-1pm

Thursday March 2, TIBURON
Shoenberg Guitars, 8:00pm
106 Main Street ($15 adv/$20 door) 415-789-0846

Friday March 3 SAN JOSE
House Concert, 8:30pm
email: cplanier@sbcglobal.net or 408-667 9986

Saturday March 4 LOS GATOS
The Great Room, Concert@8pm; Rhythm Guitar Workshop 4-6pm
email: Robert@thegr8room.com or 408-353-8347

Visit Orrin’s website for a complete tour schedule and more information.