Banjo teacher Ross Nickerson asked us to make mention of his Nova Scotia Banjo Camp scheduled for August 11-13, 2006 at the Tatamagouche Learning Center in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia.

The faculty will feature world famous banjo player, Bill Keith, along with Banjo Newsletter columnist, Ian Perry, and Ross Nickerson, author of The Banjo Encyclopedia, Bluegrass Banjo from A to Z.

The Nova Scotia Banjo Camp presented by BanjoTeacher.com will be a three-day teaching and jamming event in beautiful Nova Scotia Canada. The event will begin Friday later afternoon and conclude on Sunday afternoon with banjo workshop classes, jams, concerts and other activities. The location is set on the shores of the North Thumberland Strait on the scenic Sunrise Trail, just across the strait from Prince Edward Island.

There will also be a concert open to the public at the Tatamagouche Creamery Square Saturday August 12th, 8 to 10 PM with a jam after for all.

The workshop price is $110 US dollars, approximately, $125 Canadian Dollars.
You can register by visiting BanjoTeacher.com or by calling 1-866-322-6567.

Location
The Tatamagouche Centre is located just west of the village of Tatamagouche along the Sunrise Trail (Route 6) on the Northumberland Strait. Centrally located in the Maritimes, the Centre is one hour and 45 minutes northeast of Halifax, one hour and 45 minutes southeast of Moncton and within one hour of New Glasgow, Truro and Amherst. It is also centrally located between the PEI ferry and bridge, less than an hour from each. Visit the Tatamagouche Learning Centre Website

Room and Board and Workshop Fee
The weekend workshop fee will be $125 Canadian dollars, ($110 US). Accommodation can be provided at the Tatamagouche Centre, with the cost for room and board (including all meals and nutrition snacks) at $77 Canadian per person per night. Students are allowed to make their own arrangements for accommodations in the local area, or commute to the workshop, only paying the weekend workshop fee.

The popular Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in NY is celebrating their 30th Anniversary this year by joining forces with FestivaLink to make audio from this year’s fest available for online purchase. These will be full-length recordings which can be purchased for download, or on audio CDs, and will be available shortly after the festival concludes. Grey Fox 2006 runs July 13-18.

FestivaLink also recorded a number of sets at this year’s MerleFest. Audio from Doc Watson, John Cowan, Nashville Bluegrass Band, Hot Tuna, Mike Seeger and others can be purchased online. Prices range from approximately $10 for MP3 downloads to $17 for an audio CD of each set.

As Apple’s iTunes Music Store has grabbed up a larger segment of the worldwide music purchasing pie, many smaller independent labels and artists have been concerned that their releases would be lost amidst the slick promotion for mainstream pop projects on iTunes. Legal music download sales tripled in 2005 to just over one billion dollars (US), with digital downloads accounting for approximately 6% of all music sales. Online distributors’ catalogs were said to contain more than 2 million tracks at the end of last year, with iTunes commanding a majority of download sales in many markets.

From its inception, Apple has insisted that it wanted to broaden rather than restrict iTunes’ offerings, and initially reached out to smaller labels. Contrary to what many believe, however, Apple does not host the audio files themselves, and smaller labels often were unprepared for the technical aspects of converting files for digital distribution and making them available for iTunes on an appropriate server for download. The larger bluegrass labels (like Rounder, Sugar Hill and Rebel) now have much of their catalog on iTunes, with new projects generally released simultaneously on audio CD and iTunes. Rebel has even begun to make out-of-print titles available for iTunes-only release, a trend we hope will become more widespread.

A number of companies have arisen to assist small labels (and artists) get their music into the digital distribution realm, and iTunes is seeing more and more projects that are independently produced show up in their catalog. CD Baby has been very effective in getting independent projects into iTunes, and a number of wholesale distributors are also getting into this business. Copper Creek Records has indicated that their catalog will soon be available for digital download, and are being assisted in this effort by their primary distributor, Select-O-Hits.

Two artists we found recently on iTunes are friends of The Bluegrass Blog whose music should appeal to our readers.

Larry Keel has been a prominent fixture on the alternative acoustic scene for some time, though his more recent efforts have been a bit more mainstream bluegrass. His current band, Natural Bridge, has a grassy edge, and one of Larry’s Tunes, Mountain Song, was featured on the previous release from The Del McCoury Band. He now has three projects available to sample or purchase for download from iTunes.

If you have iTunes installed, you can find his solo project, Journey, the debut CD with his new band, Larry Keel & Natural Bridge, and a duet project with his brother Gary, The Keel Brothers Vol. 1.

Also up on iTunes are two CDs from Acoustic Endeavors, both their debut release, Coming Of Age… again, and the current On A Farm. Both CDs are made up of all-original material, and feature one of this blog’s authors on banjo.

These are projects that were wholly artist-produced, or by artist-owned independent labels, showing that this sort of release can make its way into such a dominant venue if the artists are diligent and persistent.

Noted clawhammer banjoist and fingerstyle guitarist, Ken Perlman, has been awarded a grant through the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa to do a follow-up study on the fiddle music of Prince Edward Island. He will travel once again to PEI in the fall to collect tunes and oral histories from the traditional fiddlers in the province, with an eye towards publishing the collection in some form once it is completed.

Ken will be teaching at a number of banjo camps later this year, including the Rocky Mountain Banjo camp and the American Banjo Camp.

You can see a complete listing of his teaching engagements, and his many books, CDs and DVDs, by visiting his web site.

The Grascals sat recently for an interview with Country Weekly, and it can be viewed on the CW web site.

The interview is about the upcoming Grascals CD, due in late August, which features contributions with a number of country music stars. Steve Wariner plays lead guitar on one of his compositions, Hoedown in Motown, Dierks Bentley sings a duet with Terry Eldridge, and The Jordonaires sing harmony on a Gospel cut.

They were especially excited to announce that George Jones was contributing a recitation on the last verse of a song entitled Don’t Tell Mama I Was Drinking.

Watch the video from the interview here. It’s in QuickTime format.

Audio samples from the new CD are expected to appear on The Grascals web site in the next few weeks.

For all you guitar lovers out there, Pantheon Guitars has recently announced a new model. The Bourgeois BK Slope D features premium bearclaw Sitka spruce top, figured mahogany back and sides, brazilian rosewood headstock, fretboard, bridge and bridge plate, and Adirondack spruce bracing. Additional features include ivoroid binding, snakehead headstock, 1 23/32″ nut width, ebony bridge pins, Nickel/Ivoroid Waverly tuners and a natural finish.

The first 30 guitars will be signed and numbered by Bryan Sutton and Dana Bourgeois.

Dana Bourgeois says:

The BK Slope D has a deep, broad tone. Through wood selection and voicing, we push it in the direction of a bigger bottom end, a “lush” top end, and greater volume, similar to the characteristics of Bryan’s original BK. When I first started making slope shouldered Dreadnoughts, I went for something as different as possible from the balanced and focused sound of my standard Dreadnought. The Banjo Killer gets me back to that original idea.

Bryan Sutton says:

From the first time I played the Slope-D Bourgeois that would come to be known as the “Banjo Killer”, I was amazed at the range of tone and volume the guitar could produce. The guitar always seems to be to able to handle any dynamic level of play. I can hear the guitar clearly in a loud jam session without feeling like I have to overplay and also enjoy a full and sustained tone when I want to play softly. Dana has recaptured that magic with the new BK model.

List price for the new BK Slope D is $4195.

For more information visit PantheonGuitars.com

Direct link to product page. (no site navigation)

Mountain Home Records has just announced the release of a new Lewis Family project, Flyin’ High. This new CD includes a song list gathered from some of today’s best songwriters, and features all the energy and excitement you’ve come to expect from the First Family of Bluegrass Gospel Music.

The street date for this release is set for July 18th, 2006.

In conjunction with this release, CMT filmed the band while they were in Nashville recording the tracks for their new project. The program CMT Insider will feature The Lewis Family on Saturday, July 22, with repeats on Sunday, July 23 and Monday, July 24.

Audio clips from the new CD are available on the band’s website.

The International Bluegrass Music Association has announced the election of several new members to its Board Of Directors, the governing body charged with setting long range goals and priorities for the organization. Election of board members is done by an annual ballot sent to all professional IBMA members, who vote for board seats in their membership category.

New members include:

The voting for the Event Producer membership category resulted in a tie, so a run off election will be held between Richard Tucker (Argyle Bluegrass Festival) and Stephen Ruffo (Richard Tucker (Argyle Bluegrass Festival, TX). Results should be announced by late July.

Board members serve a three year term, and serve without compensation.

Fans of The Steep Canyon Rangers may be interested in this one. Two of the instruments used on their One Dime At A Time CD are being offered for sale on the band’s web site. Mike Guggino’s Henderson F-5 mandolin and Nicky Sanders’ Johann Christian Ficker violin are both up for sale.

The new CD has spent the past 8 months on Bluegrass Unlimited’s National Bluegrass Survey, and the title track is currently the #1 single.

Contact either Mike or Nicky by email for more details about the instruments.

Mountain Home Records recording artists Mark Johnson and Emory Lester have just announced the release of a new project entitled Acoustic Rising. Mark Johnson plays a unique style on the banjo that some have termed Clawgrass. Emory Lester is a master of the mandolin but also contributes guitar, bass, viola and vocals on the recording. He is also a gifted songwriter.

The street date for this release is set for July 18th, 2006.

Mark Johnson has audio clips available on his website.