Many products these days come with a money back guarantee of some sort. Jason Feinberg at the Music Business Blog suggests that maybe artists should consider offering a guarantee when a consumer purchases their music. It’s an interesting idea that I’ve been pondering for a few days now.

Here’s a thought - so many retail products (and often services) offer a money back guarantee. Very few artists have ever tried this with music.

Very few? I don’t know of any artists that have tried this. The idea intrigues me though, because I think it might really encourage people to buy your music online. If someone comes to your website and hasn’t heard you perform live, or at least perform this music live, a guarantee might encourage them to give it a try. If you are a member of a band and have solo projects, the fans may have heard the band play, but does that guarantee they’ll like your solo CD? Just how confident are you?

The obvious objection to the idea is that you may run into a loser or two who will buy the music, copy the CD, or just use the download, and then say they didn’t like it and want their money back. That’s ok, give it back to them. They’re the type that would steal it anyway. Most bluegrass fans actively support the artists they love and offering them a guarantee is only likely to encourage that spirit.

It’s a risk, not doubt about that. As every good business man knows though, the amount of risk you take is directly related to amount of potential upside. Playing it safe, isn’t always the safest thing to do.

There’s been so much bluegrass on The Grand Ole Opry this past few months that I feel like I’m repeating myself each Friday when I point out who’s on. This week is no exception, with Mountain Heart performing on both the Friday and Saturday night shows from The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

If you have yet to catch their recently revised lineup - with new vocalist Josh Shilling front and center - and will be near a radio receiver or an Internet connection, you’ll have the chance tonight (2/16) between 9:00-9:30, and again on Saturday evening (2/17) between 8:00-8:30 and 11:00-11:30 (EST).

Also appearing on Saturday’s Opry broadcast will be Jesse McReynolds & The Virginia Boys (8:30-9:00), Cherryholmes (9:30-10:00 and midnight to 12:30) and The Whites (9:00-9:30 and 10:30-11:00). All times are Eastern.

The Opry broadcasts can be heard online via streaming audio from the WSM web site, and their radio can be heard over a wide portion of the southern and central US at 650 AM. Friday’s show runs from 9:00-11:00 p.m., and Saturday’s from 7:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m.

If you miss the live broadcasts (or audio streams) you can find selected performances posted on the WSM audio archives page by early next week.

John Starling will join host and general manager Gracie Muldoon on WorldWideBluegrass.com today (2/16) for an interview at 1:30 p.m. (EST). They will discuss John’s new CD with Carolina Star (featuring Mike Auldridge and Tom Gray), and play a few tracks as well. The new project, Slidin’ Home, is due for release next week (2/20) on Rebel Records.

Just visit the WWB site and click on the Listen button to start their live, 24/7 bluegrass feed, available in several different streaming formats for either high speed or broadband connection.

We posted back in November when CMT announced their Music City Madness video contest, timed and structured to coincide with the annual NCAA basketball tournaments. We mentioned at the time that CMT was hoping to get some bluegrass entries, and it looks like a couple have made it into the initial round of 64.

Buncombe Turnpike, a bluegrass band from western North Carolina, submitted a video for their song, Black Sedan. The video is nicely produced, and represents bluegrass well.

Our buddy Brad Davis has also been selected for his video of I’m Not Through Loving You Yet - directed by our own Brance Gillihan!

Cliff Wagner features old time banjo and dobro in his video for Old Fire, and Shady Grove does a credible grassy version of Rye Hill.

The voting is done in a bracket format, with each round involving match ups between pairs of videos. Whichever videos get the most votes in their pairings during round 1 will move on to the next in a single elimination tournament, just like in the NCAA. Voting in round 1 runs through February 26.

Visit the CMT Music City Madness Watch and Vote page to cast your ballot. Bumcombe Turnpike’s bracket is bottom left, Brad Davis’ near the bottom right. If any other bluegrass (or bluegrassy) videos are in the competition, please be sure to let us know.

Scheduled to hit the store shelves by the end of next week, the latest issue of Fretboard Journal has a cover story about Tony Rice and the famous Clarence White D-28 he plays.

This is a major article, coming in at 18 pages in length. The focus is on the instrument, with Rice giving an in-depth account of his history with the guitar, as well as improvements and work that has been done on it. In keeping with the standards of the magazine, the story is replete with with high quality, new, close up photos of the guitar, and of Tony himself.

The story also features current details about the instrument’s setup that should be of interest to guitar fanatics everywhere.

We also took relevant measurements of the guitar’s string height, neck width and string spacing as it stood two months ago.

In addition to the Rice article, this issue also has a feature story about:

the rise-and-fall of Gurian Guitars, as penned by luthier Rick Davis. We received many seldom seen shots of the Gurian factory and output from Michael Gurian himself. We also have a lengthy interview with Stefan Sobell about his mandolin (and guitar) production.

I’m told there’s also a photo essay of Rick Shubb’s psychadelic posters from the ’60s, an interview with Taj Mahal, guitar builder Bill Nash, telecaster legend Bill Kirchen, and a whole bunch of other facinating stuff.

This magazine is really top notch with some of the finest photos and graphics you’re likely to see in print. It’s something you’ll leave out on the coffee table as a work of art. You can subscribe online at the Fretboard Journal website.

This post is a contribution from David Hollender, Professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Dave has been a member of the ensemble department for several years, and teaching upright bass, but now also teaches banjo for students following the Acoustic String Principal, where banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar or fiddle players can pursue a degree at Berklee.

Chris Thile and How To Grow A Band visited Berklee College of Music Thursday for a clinic hosted by the String Department. Chris, Bryan Sutton, Greg Garrison, Noam Pikelny, and Gabe Witcher spent an hour playing for students and taking questions. Berklee mandolin teacher, John McGann introduced the band and they opened the clinic by playing two tunes from their new Sugar Hill CD - Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground and The Beekeeper.

Chris introduced the players and explained what drew him to choose these players. He cited their musical range, the chemistry that they felt, and the fact that they are musicians who can both improvise and read. This led to discussion of a new extended, through-composed work that the band has started playing. He described the concept and compositional process behind the new work, which consists mainly of written instrumental parts, along with some transitions into vocal songs, sections for improvised solos, and some sections that are essentially free improvisation. They played the first movement for the students.

Matt Glaser, Chair of the String Department asked if they still like to play straight ahead bluegrass. They graciously and bravely obliged this writer’s request to perform a standard bluegrass song that they had never played together as a unit so the students could see how they steer things on the fly. They chose Flatt and Scruggs’, My Little Girl In Tennessee. After a quick huddle to decide who would take which parts Noam kicked it off with drive and tone that would make Earl proud. (more…)

Kenny & Amanda Smith recently released a new gospel CD that we told you about here. They took the band to Nashville not long ago and recorded a a special for XM Radio.

This feature will be running this morning as part of the Studio Special series on Bluegrass Junction with Kyle Cantrell. It airs at 8AM EST this morning, so if you’re up this early, be sure to tune it in.

If you’ve already missed it, the show will be rebroadcast each day for the next week at the following times.

• 2/17 11:00 AM ET
• 2/18 6:00 PM ET
• 2/19 8:00 PM ET
• 2/20 Midnight ET
• 2/22 3:00 PM ET

The show features the group playing live in-studio and spotlights background stories about each song from Kenny & Amanda Smith Band’s new CD, “Tell Someone.” Also featured on the broadcast are group members Zachary McLamb (bass), Jason Robertson (mandolin), and Joey Cox (banjo).

This is one of the best bluegrass gospel CDs you’re likely to hear anytime soon, so if you have the chance I highly encourage you to tune in and check out.

The February 2007 issue Journal of Political Economy contains a story written by Felix Oberholzer-Gee (Harvard University) and Koleman Strumpf (University of Kansas) which claims to have found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music. The title of the piece is The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis.

The authors of the story analyzed data from the last four months of 2002 and estimated that P2P downloads had at most an impact of 0.7% on sales of CDs in that time frame, a figure they say is statistically insignificant.

Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample. Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album’s weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero.

(more…)

In the midst of all the announcements of new bands and changing personnel that have been made this year, there is one that we have yet to mention. After 8 years, Jim Hurst and Missy Raines have decided to call an end to their performing together as a duo. Both will continue to tour and record as members of The Claire Lynch Band, but Jim and Missy both felt that the time commitments with Claire, and their other side projects, simply left them with too little time for too many projects.

Missy has a new band with whom she will perform as time allows. She’s calling it Missy Raines & The New Hip, a play on words relating to her recent surgery - and the youth of her bandmates. They are working now on a debut CD project and some audio is available on their MySpace page, along with their limited tour schedule.

Jim will be dedicating some more time to teaching at workshops and clinics, and doing some duo shows with Steve Smith. Jim’s schedule is listed on his web site.

Dobro-meister Jerry Douglas recorded four projects during his time with Sugar Hill Records, and a couple of others in collaboration with other artists. Now that he is recording for Koch, Sugar Hill has assembled a compilation of Jerry’s time with them, which will be released on March 13 as Jerry Douglas - The Best Of The Sugar Hill Years.

This new CD is part of Sugar Hill’s new Americana Masters Series, which also includes compilations from James McMurtry and Guy Clark, all due for release on 3/13/07.

The Douglas CD will have 15 tracks, and you can find the list of songs on the Sugar Hill site.

If you like music videos you’re probably disappointed by the lack of bluegrass music videos on the music channels coming in over cable and satellite. Enter Ya’ll Wire. This is a fairly new site that is still under development and assembling content, but it is live.

The site features music videos for the bluegrass, country, and Christian genres. It’s advertiser driven with text ads as well as short video ads that play before/between videos. The ads are not bothersome in the least and I saw at least one of them that was entertaining in its own right.

It’s a great idea, but there really isn’t that much content in the way of bluegrass videos yet.

• Alison Krauss & Union Station - 2 videos
• Yonder Mountain String Band - 2 videos
• Ryan Shupe and The Rubber Band - 2 videos
• Chris Thile
• Sam Bush
• Rhonda Vincent
• The Grascals
• The Gibson Brothers
• Adrienne Young
• Old Crowe Medicine Show
• Lori Willcuts

That’s a total of fourteen at this time, but the site is still seeking contributions from content providers. They do have a contact form for submitting videos. You can’t actually upload anything as they do have to review your request for submission and approve copyrights. I spoke with Ruby Sioux, one of the site’s principles, and we discussed the issue of copyrights.

We pay the publishing societies BMI, SEASC, and are working on an agreement with ASCAP.

We do not allow anyone to post videos to the site without our review. We do not want people to post copyrighted material, unless the copyright holders approve.

(more…)

Tom Nechville, owner of Nechville Musical Products, has never been one to shy away from innovation in the banjo world. His Heli-Mount banjo frame (which replaces the brackets and coordinator rods), and the Nechville Meteor solid body electric banjos have won raves from banjo progressives even while drawing the ire of the arch traditionalists.

Tom’s newest design innovation, which he describes as a Hybrid banjo, is powered by what he (seriously) calls the Nechville Flux Capacitor. He chose the name because this apparatus will allow owners of traditional bracket-and-nut banjo pots to take advantage of the quick set up and adjustment capabilities of the Heli-Mount design - and enable what Tom envisions as Banjo Time Travel.

What his Banjo Flux Capacitor actually does is allow the owner of a traditional coordinator rod banjo to make the sort of neck angle adjustments that would have required the removal of the neck and a re-cutting of the heel profile, simply by turning an Allen nut. The device attaches to the outer edge of the banjo pot, connecting with the two coordinator rods, and serving as the coupling mechanism to a Nechville Heli-Mount banjo neck.

These Heli-Mount necks (which are required to use the new coupler) are built with a two-way truss rod, but attach with a cam mount to allow for this immediate adjustment of the neck angle for different bridge heights or string action preferences.

Nechville describes the mounting this way:

The key to the quick-cam is a rounded interface between the end of the neck and the radiused portion of Nechville’s Helimount frame. (more…)

AcuTab has announced two new bluegrass instructional DVDs for release this spring, one each for banjo and mandolin.

First up will be Bluegrass Banjo Master Class, featuring Bill Evans. This will be the fourth installment in AcuTab’s popular Power Pickin’ series, which to this point had been wholly dedicated to playing bluegrass banjo backup.

The new DVD has Bill going over a wide range of banjo techniques, focusing on the common errors and problems that he has found popping up most frequently in both private lessons and workshops. These include detailed anaysis of right and left hand positioning, pick attack and posture. He also demonstrates some of the most common licks and phrases in the Scruggs style repertoire, and how making simple changes to these licks can expand your own bag of licks, and start you on further explorations of your own.

Bluegrass Banjo Master Class will include material of interest to relatively new pickers, as well as seasoned players, and is expected in mid-to-late March. Anyone wishing to receive an email notice when the DVD is available, or when more details are posted on the AcuTab site, can request notification at acutab.com.

Serious students of the mandolin will celebrate this one - an AcuTab DVD featuring Adam Steffey, Mountain Heart’s mando monster. Adam will teach and demonstrate a number of tunes and solos he has recorded over the years, and discuss his approach to the mandolin, building solos, working in the studio and playing bluegrass mandolin accompaniment.

There is a discussion over at Mandolin Cafe where AcuTab solicited input from forum members as to which tunes and techniques they would like to see covered in the Steffey DVD. The video shoot is scheduled for February 21, so there is still time to get your suggestions and requests in. Do so by contributing at Mandolin Cafe, or by email to AcuTab.

You can also request notification by email when the Steffey DVD is ready at the AcuTab site.

James Reams, Walter Hensley & The Barons of Bluegrass are offering free downloads of three songs from their latest release, Wild Card, via Download.com.

These are the full tracks from the CD in an unrestricted MP3 format, ready for burning to a CD, or uploading to an iPod or MP3 player.

The songs available from Download.com are We’re The Kind Of People That Make The Jukebox Play, Working On A Building and Where No Heart Goes Hungry. You can listen online to each track before downloading.

Of course, they hope that you will enjoy theses free tracks so well that you will head right over to CDBaby or iTunes to purchase the complete Wild Card project.

Sammy Shelor let us know today that he has two new members with him in Lonesome River Band. To be precise, it’s actually one new member, and one returning.

Brandon Rickman is back with the band, playing guitar and singing lead, returning after being gone for a year and a half. He had asked out in the fall of 2005 to focus on his songwriting and spend time with his family, but decided that performing is where he wants to be.

Sammy sounded pleased to have him back.

“Brandon is a great vocalist and songwriter, and one of the best emcees I’ve ever seen. It will be good to have him on stage with us again.”

New to LRB is bass player Mike Anglin, who has recently been working with both Larry Cordle and 3 Fox Drive, and previously with Continental Divide, among other stage and studio gigs. Sammy said that Mike brings something to the band he has wanted for some time.

“Mike can wail on either the upright or electric. If we are playing a traditional bluegrass show, he can play the acoustic, and if we are at a jam grass or high volume show, he can grab the electric.”

Rounding out the band is Matt Leadbetter on dobro, Andy Ball on mandolin and Sammy on banjo.

The newly revised version of the band will be on display next weekend for the first time, performing on the radio and on stage. On Friday (2/23) they will be a featured guest on WDVX radio’s The Blue Plate program between noon and 1:00 p.m., and later that evening at The Station Inn in Nashville.

They will also be in Clay City, KY on February 24 at the Meadowgreen Music Hall. You can find the full LRB schedule on the band’s web site.

Recently we told you about a show our friend Frank Solivan II did at the Kennedy Center. That performance is now available for viewing online at the center’s website. The show is up in it’s entirety. It looks like it’s provided in a flash format so it should be no problem viewing regardless of platform or browser.

Click here to watch the show.

One of my favorite moments is the band’s rendition of Dimond Rio’s 1994 classic Bubba Hyde. It comes about 17 minutes in to the show. It’s swinging and very cool!

The band is comprised of Frank on mandolin/fiddle, Mike Munsford on banjo, John Miller on guitar, and Chris Walls on bass. All the guys contribute to the singing, with Frank and John handling the bulk of the lead.

Frank is best known for his role in the Navy Band, Country Current, but this is a great opportunity to hear him performing his own material from both his solo projects. You can find, and purchase, both of those on Frank’s website or through the iTunes music store.

Some of the more popular bluegrass instrumental projects of recent years have been in a Pinecastle series which came to be called the Bluegrass Annual projects, as each was designated by the year in which it was released. Seven CDs were eventually included, starting with Bluegrass ‘95, and concluding with Bluegrass 2001.

The series had a largely accidental genesis, initially recorded as a solo project for Clay Jones, now guitarist with Mountain Heart. When that project was finished, Clay made a decision to work outside of music, and Pinecastle was prepared to shelve the recording, seeing no venue to promote it. Scott Vestal, a long time friend of Clay’s who played banjo on the project, intervened with the label and convinced them to release it as an instrumental CD so that the artists who recorded with Clay (Adam Steffey, Wayne Benson, Aubrey Haynie, Barry Bales), could at least offer it for sale at their shows.

Scott was quoted in an August 2000 article in Banjo NewsLetter about this, and how he came to take charge of creating and producing an instrumental release for them for each of the next six years.

“I talked with Tom Riggs at Pinecastle and suggested that we release it in some form with a generic title so that at least the guys on the record could sell it at shows. I just threw out the name, Bluegrass ‘95 and he liked it. No one expected it to sell so well but, when it did, Pinecastle turned the concept over to me and asked me to do one each year.”

Each was successful in its own right, but as the CD inventory for each title sold through, Pinecastle has elected to let them go out of print. Bluegrass 2001 is the only one still available as an audio CD.

They released a compilation from those CDs in the summer of 2005, called Ultimate Pickin, which featured 20 tracks taken from those recordings, and now a second compilation is out with a bit broader range that includes more tracks from those popular CDs.

The newly released More Ultimate Pickin also contains 20 tracks, taken from the aforementioned Vestal-produced projects, and other Pinecastle CDs like Bobby Osborne & Jesse McReynolds’ Masters Of The Mandolin, among others. A full track listing and a few audio samples can be found on the Pinecastle site.

You can still obtain the individual Bluegrass Annual projects as digital downloads in the iTunes Music Store. Follow the links below to find them in iTunes.

We received a note recently from Jim Peterson, who hosts a one hour, twice weekly bluegrass radio show on KMXT in Kodiak, Alaska. His show, The Acoustic Music Hour, has been running for 14 years, and airs on Tuesdays at 3:00 p.m. and Saturdays at 1:00 p.m. (AKST).

Jim asked us to remind artists and labels - especially independents - that he is eager to receive new releases to consider for airplay. The Acoustic Music Hour is a very popular show in Kodiak, and consistently generates the largest amount of pledges during fund drives.

CDs can be directed to the station address:

You can listen to Jim’s show - and any other KMXT programming - online in real time via streaming audio.

As one would have expected, someone has posted the video from Tony Trischka and Steve Martin’s appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show last Thursday up on YouTube.

They were on to promote Tony’s Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular CD, and played one of Steve’s compositions from the project, The Crow.

The clip features both the tune (with twin banjos) and a brief discussion between Ellen and the banjo boys.

California photographer Tom Tworek has recently posted a gallery of images he shot at SuperGrass, the California Bluegrass Association’s annual indoor winter festival, which ran February 1-4.

These were taken from the stage, and are mostly close up, portrait shots of bluegrass artists like JD Crowe & The New South, Kenny & Amanda Smith, The Grascals, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, The Isaacs and others.

You can find these images on Tom’s site, Gold Coast galleries, where he has also posted photos taken at a number of bluegrass events, and where you can purchase his portraits online.