Rhonda Vincent is the All American Bluegrass Girl and this last weekend she helped bring bluegrass music to the all American sport, NASCAR racing. Saturday, July 28, 2007, at O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, IN, Rhonda treated the NASCAR fans to a one hour pre-race concert that culminated with her singing the National Anthem to begin the race.

That race was the Kroger 200, originally broadcast on ESPN2. The race will be rebroadcast on August 2, at 12 Noon, EST. The only part of Rhonda’s performance that will be preserved with the rebroadcast is her singing of the National Anthem.

Rhonda, and her band The Rage, will again be joining NASCAR in Bristol, TN August 23 when they will perform for the Food City Family Race Night.

Wednesday morning at 8:00 a.m. marks the official radio premiere of the new Rebel Records CD from The Steep Canyon Rangers on XM Satellite Radio’s Bluegrass Junction. Host Kyle Cantrell will play each of the tracks from Lovin’ Pretty Women, and discuss them one at a time both with band members, and producer Ronnie Bowman.

The show will be repeated several more times over the next two weeks (all times eastern).

• Wednesday (8/1) at 8:00 a.m.
• Saturday (8/4) at 4:00 p.m.
• Wednesday (8/8) at 9:00 p.m.
• Sunday (8/12) at noon
• Tuesday (8/15) at 3:00 p.m.

I’ve been listening to this CD for the past two weeks, enjoying it very much. The songwriting is clever and the performances are lively with instrumental work that is solidly traditional, and vocals that reflect the non-southern background of many so younger bands in today’s market. Look for the title track to become a radio and festival favorite.

There are a few tracks accessible on the band’s MySpace page if you want an immediate taste of the new material. Lovin’ Pretty Women hits the street on August 14.

If you tune in (log on) to WorldWideBluegrass.com at 6:00 p.m. EDT this evening (7/31), you can hear an interview with Greg Cahill, banjo player with Special Consensus, and Board Chair for the IBMA. He will join WWB host Uncle Billy Dunbar for discussion - and surely some music as well.

Greg has plenty to talk about these days, with a new CD from Special C, The Trail Of Aching Hearts, and a new member of the band Ashby Frank, having recently joined them on mandolin.

To listen to the 24/7 WWB audio stream online, just visit their streaming page, and choose a connection speed and file type.

We posted yesterday afternoon about Hot Rize performing during and after Steve Martin’s “surprise” wedding ceremony at his home in Los Angeles on July 28. As we might have suspected, Pete Wernick (Dr. Banjo) was in the thick of the preparations, owing to his friendship and banjo connection with Martin.

Pete provided this overview of how it all went down.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise wedding. It was planned months ahead, but due to Steve’s celebrity, he was concerned about paparazzi disrupting things, and asked that it not be discussed at all in advance, as word about such things tends to travel fast.

In brief, Steve got in touch with me some months ago about providing music for the wedding (at his home in Beverly Hills). I asked if he wanted me to get some musicians from the area, or just “whoever I want.” He said to get whoever I want. When I asked, what would you think of having Hot Rize, he said, “I’d kill for Hot Rize.” Thank goodness that wasn’t necessary. Bryan Sutton, who generally plays guitar with us, was not available, so we got David Grier, who did just fine of course.

Steve and his wife Anne gave a lot of thought to the music they wanted, and they took my suggestion to use Romance Is a Slow Dance, a great song of Tim’s, to begin the ceremony. Then Tim fiddled a beautiful Irish air as the bride and her father came forward. The ceremony, performed by “Reverend” Bob Kerrey (former U.S. Senator), was followed by a rousing banjo tune.

Steve had indicated that if Hot Rize was there, “it would be a sin” not to have us do a mini-set for the guests. He added, “as in, I would go to hell.” So following dinner, Steve introduced us and we did five songs including Blue Night, High on a Mountain, and a song I wrote for Steve and Anne, This is Our Time. For the last two tunes, we were joined by Steve on banjo, and played Steve’s tune The Crow and finished with Foggy Mt. Breakdown. We were very well received, with the guests applauding for solos and many nice comments afterwards. In attendance were such notables as Tom Hanks, Diane Keaton, Carl Reiner, Eugene Levy, and Martin Mull. Steve and Martin both participated in the jamming that went on into the night.

Steve arranged that all guests receive a copy of the band’s So Long of a Journey CD as a party favor. As they filtered out and the party wound down, we continued to play informally, with Steve and Anne asking for one more rendition of Romance Is a Slow Dance.

The next morning we headed for LAX, and I made it all the way to Elkins, WV for Bluegrass Week at the Augusta Heritage program, which is where I’m writing this from!

In closing, I’ll say it is truly an honor for Hot Rize to be appreciated in such a high class way by such a respected figure of American culture as Steve Martin. People ask me what sort of person he is, and I can say in all honesty that he is one fine gentleman, with the wonderful quality of showing interest in other people and making them feel appreciated. Almost impossible to fathom that, given his irreverent style of humor, but it’s true. I also am often asked about whether Steve might do one thing or another for “the bluegrass cause,” and I can only say time will tell. Naturally if he has any desire to do that, I will be glad to facilitate!

Some of you may have caught Don Rigsby’s appearance last night on the ABC-TV reality series Six Degrees of Separation. The concept behind the series is that anyone is only six steps away from contacting anyone else on the planet. Last night’s show featured Martina McBride as the celebrity the contestants were supposed to approach. The winner would receive a recording contract in Nashville, and the opportunity to perform on stage with McBride.

One of the contestants had a friend who led him to Sandy Knipp, a radio DJ in Morehead, KY. Knipp hosts Bluegrass Diversions, a weekly bluegrass radio show on WMKY-FM, 90.3. Knipp led the contestant to Rigsby, who took them to Nashville.

The episode just aired last night, and hasn’t yet appeared online. There is a short clip available on the series website that gives you just a glimpse of Rigsby. You can watch that video here.

When Hollywood stars and friends of comedian (and banjo player) Steve Martin accepted his invitation to a dinner party at his Los Angeles home on July 28, no one was expecting anything other than some good music, and good times together.

When the guests arrived - including film luminaries like Tom Hanks, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy and Carl Reiner - they realized that they were actually to be the guests at Martin’s surprise wedding to Anne Stringfield, his girlfriend of the past three years.

A reunited Hot Rize was on hand to provide the bluegrass music, with original members Tim O’Brien, Pete Wernick and Nick Forster joined by David Grier on guitar. They not only entertained after the wedding dinner, but also provided the music for the ceremony itself.

O’Brien sang his song Romance Is A Slow Dance to start the ceremony, and played the traditional Irish air, Sheebeg and Sheemore on fiddle for the processional. Wernick played a jaunty version of Cripple Creek on the banjo as the newlyweds recessed.

After dinner, Martin introduced Hot Rize for a short set, during which he joined them on stage with his banjo, performing his tune The Crow, and a double banjo version of Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

Congratulations to the happy couple. A marriage consecrated by bluegrass music is bound to take, yes?

AT&T blue room has just posted live video from Old Crow Medicine Show. Five songs are included, each in a separate clip: Big Time, Minglewood Blues, Hard To Love, Lift Him Up, and Tell It To Me.

The performances were recorded at Bonnaroo 2007 back in June, and show the band in their element, before a large crowd of fans. All the live songs can be viewed online in the blue room media player.

You can find out more about the band on their web site.

Mel Bay has a new book of banjo transcriptions, American Banjo: Three-Finger and Scruggs Style, taken from the classic Folkways field recordings released under the same title.

Originally released in 1956, the LP version of these recordings, taken by musician and folklorist Mike Seeger, includes dozens of tracks of simple, basic - one might even say primitive - examples of the 3 finger style which had only recently been popularized by Earl Scruggs. They include recordings of Snuffy Jenkins, who is believed to have been a strong influence on the young Scruggs, Earl’s brother Junie Scruggs, Smiley Hobbs, Larry Richardson, Roni Stoneman and several others.

Folkways re-issued these recordings in 1990, adding 16 previously unreleased tracks. It is still available from Folkways, with 43 tracks on 2 CDs. Audio samples and download purchases are available via Smithsonian Global Sound.

The Mel Bay book contains 80 pages of tablature taken from the CD,  transcribed by Steve Garner. Anyone interested in the early history of 3 finger banjo will find plenty to chew on here.

Here are three interviews we found this past few days in local newspapers’ coverage of upcoming entertainment events.

First up is King Wilkie, whose Reid Burgess was interviewed in The Dallas Morning News on July 23. He spoke with Mario Tarradell about the band’s decision to break with their traditional bluegrass sound for a more melancholy pop approach.

“I don’t think anybody wanted to go back in the studio and make the same bluegrass record,” Mr. Burgess, 27, says by phone from Richmond, Va. “Over the course of about five years we did every arrangement of a bluegrass song that we could possibly think of. I’m not the same person I was then. It would make sense to not do the same type of songs. We were steering ourselves in that direction. We were writing songs that sounded this way. We didn’t want to do the same thing again. It was starting to sound forced.”

You can read the entire interview on the Morning News site.

The Vail Daily ran an interview with John Cowan on 7/23. John spoke with Ted Alvarez about his current CD, New Tattoo, and also about his days performing with Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn as Newgrass Revival. He suggests that he is enjoying returning to that Newgrass vibe with his road band.

“This incarnation of my band is the first time since New Grass that I’ve felt we could get back to that special place and make magic happen,” he said. “For me it’s coming back to something I know really well — It’s been a coming home of sorts. We’ve had this line-up of the band for over a year now and the response from the crowds has been overwhelming.”

That full piece can also be found online.

On July 27, the Cabot Star-Herald in Cabot, AR carried an interview with Larry Sparks. The piece is primarily about the new Sparks release, The Last Suit You Wear, but touches on Larry’s long career in bluegrass along the way. At one point, writer Charles Haymes brings up how much bluegrass has changed over the years, with pop and country influences being absorbed into the sound.

However, Sparks has stood as tall as a redwood tree, remaining unchanged and loyal to the genre.

“I’m exactly where I belong,” Sparks acknowledged. “I love bluegrass music. I’ve always felt that bluegrass music needed me and I know that I’ve needed it. I think we’re a good match for each other. “

That one can be read on the Cabot Star-Herald site.

WAMU, and it’s online sister station BluegrassCountry.org, are celebrating the summer of 2007 as their 40th year broadcasting bluegrass music. It was in 1967 that Dick Spottswood and Gary Henderson, who were among the founders of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine that same year, launched a program by that name on July 2, carried on WAMU 88.5 FM, broadcast from the campus of the American University in Washington, DC.

To help mark the anniversary, the folks at WAMU have searched through their archives and are running some special programs over the next few weeks.

The first, Katy Daley’s 1975 interview with Vassar Clements, starts tonight (8/28) at 10:48 p.m. The show is called Fiddle Players Young and Old, and will run repeatedly on BluegrassCountry.org over the next few weeks. The discussion with Vassar was recorded at DC’s legendary Cellar Door during his debut tour as a band leader, and was also the first interview Katy recorded for WAMU as a cub bluegrass radio host.

It runs again on Sunday (8/29) at 1:04 a.m., and also includes an interview with 12 year fiddler Roland Clark, who spoke with Michelle Mercer of NPR. Find future air times by checking the BluegrassCountry.org schedule online.

You can read more of the history of bluegrass programming on WAMU and BluegrassCountry.org on their web site.

After 7 years of offering 3 day multi-instrument bluegrass seminars, Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend is calling it quits. Jointly hosted since November of 2002 by mandolin legend Herschel Sizemore and our own John Lawless, RBW has fallen prey to the many demands of John’s work with AcuTab, and Herschel’s retirement interests.

The event got its start in 1998 as an an all-banjo event, The AcuTab Banjo Seminar, which John hosted on his own. In 2000, Dan Miller, publisher of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine joined as co-host, and they added mandolin and guitar to the mix. During that period, they welcomed such esteemed artists as Sammy Shelor, Wayne Benson, David Grier and Chris Thile as instructors.

When Dan pulled out after two years, Herschel and John teamed up to continue operating the event, adding fiddle as well as bass, dobro and voice at various times since 2002. They were proud to see legends like Kenny Baker, Bobby Hicks, Roland White, Allen Shelton and Eddie Adcock as members of their faculty, plus younger “impact players” like Ron Stewart, Aubrey Haynie, Rob Ickes, Kenny Smith, Tim Stafford, Adam Steffey and Don Rigsby - just to name a few.

There is a statement from Herschel and John on the RBW web site about the event’s demise.

In all things, there comes a time to say goodbye, and so it is with our Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend. We both find our time stretched thin, and are unwilling to continue with this event absent our full attention and concentration. It has not been an easy decision, but we feel that it would be unfair to hold the weekend with so little time to dedicate to making it beneficial for the registrants.

Ultimately, it has been the students who have attended that have had the biggest impact on RBW, and we thank you all most particularly for supporting this event over the years. Your suggestions and feedback helped us to shape and modify RBW from one year to the next, and it was seeing your exhausted but beaming faces as things came to a close each year that kept us going when the time commitment seemed too severe.

Please don’t blame The Bluegrass Blog! John says that it is his other commitments and plans that have him in a time bind.

Joe Booher is the newest member of Ohio based NewFound Road. Joe, who plays mandolin, will be filling the vacancy left by the departure of founding member Rob Baker. Baker made the decision to leave the band, after nearly six years, in order to devote more time to his family and pursue other interests. NFR will miss Rob, but the band is excited about creating new music with a new band member on board.

Joe Booher hails from Johnson City, TN where he has been playing with his family’s band, The Boohers. Just in his early twenties, Joe already has many years of experience and has proven himself to be an accomplished mandolin player.

The first show with Booher on board will be August 16th in Thomas, West Virginia. NFR invites all their fans to come out and make Joe welcome!

In June we told you about an upcoming special on GAC TV, featuring Alison Krauss performing songs from her latest Rounder CD,  Hundred Miles Or More. In mid-July, we posted again to alert everyone that the initially announced air date of July 14-15 had been canceled, with a later date to be announced.

Now comes word that the show will finally air in August, starting with the 8/11-12 weekend.

The concept of this one hour special, shot live in the recording studio, is to showcase the songs on the latest CD, many of which feature Alison in duet with other notable vocalists. The program will include her singing with country star Brad Paisley on their duet hit Whiskey Lullaby, and with famed singer/songwriter James Taylor on The Louvin Brothers’ How’s The World Treating You?”

She is assisted throughout by her stellar band, Union Station (featuring Jerry Douglas), with guest appearances from Tony Rice, Sam Bush and Stuart Duncan for Sawin’ On The Strings, perhaps the only purely bluegrass number on the show.

The special will debut on GAC Friday, August 11 at 9:00 p.m., and later that same night at 1:00 a.m. (technically Saturday morning). It will run again the following Saturday evening (8/19) at 8:00 p.m., with one additional showing on Sunday (8/20) at 3:00 p.m. All times are Eastern.

Former Dillards bass player Mitch Jayne has just released his latest book of fiction.

Fiddler’s Ghost is the story of a young couple who move to a small Ozark town where the locals folks live by customs that seem generations out of date. As they learn about the people and their ways, they encounter Hiram, a musical ghost who haunts the old home where they had settled.

Jayne has long been recognized as a clever humorist, and a master of the dialects and ways of the Ozark Mountain people. Anyone who had the chance to see the Dillards live in the 1960s will recall the dead pan, pipe smoking Jayne telling tales and spinning yarns between songs.

Since leaving the band, he has focused on writing, and has three novels published, one of which (Old Fish Hawk) has been made into a motion picture.

I asked Mitch about how he came to write Fiddler’s Ghost.

“Ghosts have a different schedule, and before I followed Hiram, I had to follow a musical life myself for several years, and write a book (Home Grown Stories and Home Fried Lies) about that and other Ozark happenings. My ghost didn’t care. Having already wisped around the universe for a hundred and thirty-odd years, he wasn’t a bit jealous of time, and for all I know spent some of it watching Andy Griffith re-runs, and expecting Dan Randant, my publisher, to remind me that Hiram still waited in the wings of an unexplored stage for me to finish what I began so long ago.”

Fiddler’s Ghost is published by Wildstone Media, and is available from them directly, and from Amazon.com.

There is a ton of bluegrass emanating from The Grand Ole Opry this weekend - on radio, online, and on TV.

Friday night’s radio broadcast will feature performances by Bobby Osborne, John Cowan and Mountain Heart, and Saturday’s show has John Cowan again, along with Mike Snider and The Whites.

The Friday show airs from 9:00-11:00 p.m. on WSM 650 AM, and on Saturday from 7:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Both shows are streamed live from WSMonline.com, and portions of each show will be available in their audio archives next week. All times are EDT.

On GAC TV Saturday night, their Opry Live program has two songs by The Grascals, filmed on July 24 during the Tuesday Night Opry. That airs at 8:00 p.m.  July 28, and again at midnight. GAC will run it again at noon and 7:00 p.m. on Sunday (7/29) and then on Tuesday (7/31) at 9:00 p.m.

In fact, if you are in Nashville Thursday evening (7/26), you can catch the last of this summer’s Bluegrass Nights at The Opry concerts with The Grascals, Mountain Heart and The Steep Canyon Rangers.

Now in it’s 11th year, Flatpicking Guitar Magazine has just released a series of CD-ROM compilations containing articles and tablatures from the Best of the First Ten Years of the magazine.

The series consists of 4 discs, each pulling articles on a specific topic from back issues of the magazine published between November/December 1996 (Volume 1, Number 1) and September/October 2006 (Volume 10, Number 6). The content on the discs is presented in PDF format with an index file containing a table of contents with links to each individual article or tab.

The four discs in the series are:

1. Cover Story Articles: 60 cover story articles with tablatures
2. Rhythm Articles: 90 rhythm guitar articles and 29 interviews with rhythm guitar players
3. Guitar Builder Articles: 50 builder interviews, 14 reviews, 11 guitar building articles
4. Editor’s Song Picks: 147 song transcriptions

I guess that a new CD, a revamped stage band and a busy touring schedule won’t be the highlight of Doyle Lawson’s summer of ‘07.

The news that has him occupied at present is the birth of his first grandchild, Spencer Raleigh Lawson Williams, on July 18. He is the son of Doyle’s daughter Kristi, and her husband Ben.

Grandma Suzanne Lawson shared a few details:

“He is a big boy, weighing in at 8 lbs. 11 oz., and he’s 21.5″ long. He has really big feet, a bit of dark hair and dark eyes. The Lawsons and extended family couldn’t be more excited.”

From the look of the accompanying photo, it appears that Doyle is already teaching Spencer to sing!

Congratulations all around to Doyle and his family.

Ricky Skaggs and his collaboration with Bruce Hornsby have been the topic of a number of recent pieces on The Bluegrass Blog.

We told you earlier this month about the two appearing on the CBS Early Show with Skaggs’ band, Kentucky Thunder, on July 13, and have two updates that relate to that appearance.

First of all, there is video up on the CBS News site where you can watch their live performance online. They talk to Early Show host Hannah Storm about their musical pairings, and then perform Hornsby’s Dreaded Spoon, a new song with a nice Celtic flair.

Also recently published is a blog post from Nick Bailey, a publicist working for Shore Fire Media who is handling promotion for the Skaggs/Hornsby CD. Nick was in Raleigh, NC for the TV appearance, and has photos and some details on what transpired posted on the Shore Fire blog.

Here’s a new CD release that’s worth mentioning. Cool Mandolin Company exists for the purpose of promoting the mandolin, especially to the younger generation. With that in mind, they have put together a CD of tracks from various artists, the sale of which goes to create scholarships for young mandolin pickers to attend mandolin programs around the country.

It’s a great idea, with a great cause, and some great players. The players donated their respective tracks to the project and receive no remuneration for the sale of the CD.

The title of the CD is An American Tradition and it features 15 tracks, all from different artists. The players include such artists as:

• Andrew Collins
• Ben Winship
• Justin Moses
• Simon Mayor
• Butch Baldassari
• Rich DelGrosso
• John Lowell
• Dominick Leslie
• Josh Pinkham
• Sierra Hull
• Ryan Holladay
• John McGann
• Frank Solivan II
• Scott Gates
• Laura Leder - Cool Mandolin Company founder

Just looking at that list of names should give you an idea of the diversity of styles represented on this disc. There is everything from straight up bluegrass, to jazz, to blues, and beyond. It makes for an enjoyable listen. I enjoyed hearing some of the players and tracks I was already familiar with, but I also discovered a couple new artists I had never heard before. That always makes for a good day!

Most notably, I enjoyed Simon Mayor, who I had never heard before. Don’t blame me, I’m just a guitar player! Great music from the UK. Butch Baldassari’s contribution struck me as particularly enjoyable. Great tone Butch! John Lowell, who I’ve always enjoyed, contributes the only vocal tune in duet with Ben Winship. Our friend Frank Solivan II contributes the tune with the coolest name, Scorchin’ The Gravy. And the young players on here, wow!

I encourage you to pick up a copy and check out some of these great players.

Bluegrass mandolinist, singer and band leader David Davis was the subject of an interview this past weekend in the Seattle Times. He and his band, The Warrior River Boys, performed at the Darrington Bluegrass Festival on July 21, and spoke with Diane Wright of the Times’ Snohomish County Bureau at some length.

Among other topics, they discussed the Davis family’s bluegrass pedigree.

His dad’s older brother Cleo led the way in the profession. He answered an ad in a newspaper in 1938 and became the first member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys.

Davis first met Monroe in 1974. “I was going into the sixth grade. It was like Mount Rushmore. I had always heard about him. It was really awesome.”

You can read the entire article online at the Seattle Times web site.

Audio samples from him latest CD, Troubled Times, and the tour schedule for the band on the official David Davis & The Warrior River Boys web site.