The International Bluegrass Music Association has recently created a page on MySpace to help spread the word about the organization and its mission.

At this time of year, that mission is largely centered on the 2007 World of Bluegrass convention and Fan Fest, occurring October 1-7 in Nashville. You can find details about this year’s events on their MySpace page, with links to get further details.

You also find audio podcasts with Doyle Lawson, Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas.

Their MySpace URL is www.myspace.com/internationalbluegrassmusicassociation.

The Ola Belle Reed Homecoming Festival is sponsoring the raffle of a Wayne Henderson D-18 guitar to raise funds to further and preserve the music of their namesake.

Ola Belle Reed was a singer, songwriter and banjo player who performed with her family as the North Carolina Ridge Runners starting in the 1950s. She passed away in 2002, and the festival was established to help keep her music alive.

As they put it on their site:

The Festival will feature the music of Ola Belle’s husband and sons, musicians who played with her over the years, newer groups that are carrying on her tradition, and local talent. It will also celebrate the life and philosophy of a woman who spent a lifetime “tearing down the fences that fence us all in.”

Wayne Henderson’s guitars are made by hand in his small shop, with waiting lists of several years the norm. He was the subject of a book published in 2005 called Clapton’s Guitar, by Allen St. John, which chronicles the building of a custom Henderson guitar for the rock legend.

You can find out more about the raffle, and purchase tickets online, on the Ola Belle Reed festival web site.

Modern Guitars Magazine is an online publication dedicated to, you guessed it, guitars. They published a story on Monday about luthier/inlay artist Grit Laskin.

Laskin is located in Toronto, Canada. His signature style is elaborate inlays in both headstock and fingerboard. These inlays are more than a simple design, these are art. His website contains a large gallery of photos showing off Laskin’s work. The two photos included in the post are the ones that caught my eye.

In addition to the inlay art, Laskin has designed a couple of innovative structural modifications to the standard guitar shape. His designs could be described as ergonomic. They are not major changes, just subtle modifications designed to make playing the guitar a more comfortable experience.

Laskin’s most notable contributions to the evolution of acoustic guitars are his body beveling techniques, which help reduce players’ stress and soreness. The idea for the Armrest© came from a classical player who asked Laskin to round off the purfling where his right arm rested against the guitar because he found the sharp edge uncomfortable. Laskin later developed the Ribrest©, a bevel on the upper back edge of the guitar, which makes it feel more comfortable against the player’s body.

Modern Guitars Magazine’s story starts with some background biographical info about Laskin and then continues with a 2 page interview. For those interested in fine guitars, this story should be of great interest.

Also, Laskin is billed as a multi-instrumentalist himself, playing guitar, mandolin, banjo, and several other instruments.

The folks at Washburn Guitars are celebrating 2007 as their 125th year making and marketing musical instruments.

The company was founded in 1887 by George Washburn Lyon, and located in a small factory in Chicago, IL. An early focus of Washburn Guitars was the burgeoning delta blues music scene that had developed in Chicago at the time. That blues scene was centered around Chicago’s Maxwell Street, which was only a short distance from the first Washburn factory, and had a major influence on the early development of the brand.

They made steel string guitars, typically smaller body sizes by today’s standards, as well as banjos and mandolins.

The brand went inactive for a period, and was resurrected in 1975 by Fretted Industries, another Chicago company, which has since morphed into US Music Corp.

Electric guitars and basses, plus amplification and sound reinforcement are the major focus at Washburn these days, and they have been very successful in that market at a variety of price points. They still have a hand in acoustic guitars, however, and both student and professional banjos and mandolins.

Congratulations to Washburn for reaching this milestone.

Former Blue Grass Boy Larry Richardson passed away on Fathers Day, June 17, after a six-month long battle with colon cancer. He died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Lake Butler, Florida.

Born August 9, 1927, in the Galax area of Virginia, Richardson was a highly-rated old style mountain banjo player, someone who epitomised the early days of bluegrass music. He was from the old school of lead/tenor singers, crystal clear and high and real lonesome. Also, as can be heard on his work with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, he was a talented lead guitarist.

He penned Don’t Forget Me, the perennially popular Pain in My Heart, Will I Meet Mother in Heaven and Lonesome, Sad and Blue with Bobby Osborne, each of which was recorded in March 1950 while the duo were with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. These recordings are also found on an album in Rounder’s Early Days Of Bluegrass series, Vol. 3 - New Sounds Ramblin’ from Coast to Coast.

Richardson worked with Bill Monroe during the 1950-1951 period.

Larry Richardson can be heard in the form of several tracks on the 1957 Various Artists LP American Banjo Three-Finger and Scruggs Style (Folkways FA 2314, re-issued on CD as Smithsonian Folkways 40037), Dear Old Dixie, Little Maggie, Take Me Back To the Sweet Sunny South , Bucking Mule and Lonesome Road Blues.

Another Larry Richardson recording is found on a later Folkways album, Galax, Virginia; Old Fiddler’s Convention (Folkways FA 2435, 1964). Accompanied by Sonny Miller and Johnny Jackson, Richardson plays a fine rendition of Turkey In The Straw. (more…)

Randy Kohrs is probably best known for his fantastic dobro playing and high tenor singing. He also has some notoriety as a producer and recording engineer. But now he’s winning awards for design, no not graphic design, upholstery design!

The June/July issue of Upholstery Journal announces the winners of the 2007 Design & Craftsmanship Awards. Randy won top honors (platinum) for the design of a set of ‘63 Chevy booth seats in the “green room” of his studio.

The green room resembles an old style dinner complete with black and white floor tiles and the award winning booth which has built speakers between the seats.

Randy only takes co-design credit for the booth seats. Raul Rodriguez is the designer Randy worked with on the project.

The best part of winning this award is that now Randy has an award winning studio!

Gibson has a page on their web site dedicated to several modern bluegrass artists who are having an impact on the music. As it happens, they all play Gibson mandolins. What a coincidence!

The artists featured are The Infamous Stringdusters, Cherryholmes, Cadillac Sky, The Greencards, The Grascals and Sierra Hull. In perhaps an odd choice of words, the page is entitled Hillbilly Hipsters.

You might be familiar with most of these artists, but a name that not everyone may recognize is Sierra Hull. Just 15 years old, she is already taking the bluegrass world by storm, playing both mandolin and guitar, and fronting her own band, Highway 111. She has been recognized as a true prodigy since she was 12 years old, and has been featured as a guest performer with Alison Krauss & Union Station, and filled in for Adam Steffey with Mountain Heart.

There are several videos showcasing her prowess on YouTube.

As part of their Hillbilly Hipsters promotion, Gibson is making available a free download from Sierra, a tune named Hullarious. The page also has streaming audio of Sierra’s tune, and Fork In The Road from The Infamous Stringdusters’ debut CD of the same name.

Read about all these artists - and hear some music - at Gibson’s Backstage Pass site.

UKBluegrass.com recently posted an interview with fiddle player, and instructor, Brian Wicklund. The interview centers around the instructional website BluegrassCollege.org. Brian was one of the founders of the site and continues to teach fiddle lessons online as one of the site’s main instructors.

We’ve told you about BluegrassCollege.org before, but for those who are new here, let me explain. The site offers online instruction on all the major bluegrass instruments, including: fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, dobro, and bass.

Each lesson includes notes and tips along with tab/notation in pdf format, the lesson in video (Quicktime) format at more than one skill level, and mp3 files of practice tracks at varying tempos.

If you want to know more, read the interview over at UKBluegrass.com and then visit BluegrassCollege.org.

Compass Records has launched a YouTube channel to promote the many fine artists who record for the label. They intend to feature music videos, concert footage and even funny moments with Compass artists.

The first video is a live performance from this May’s StringNation festival in Camden, NJ featuring Darol Anger’s Republic Of Strings.

The Compass folks ask that anyone with video that might be suitable for their YouTube channel to please contact them so that it can be included.

Enjoy Republic Of Strings’ version of Duck River Song below.

Summer’s barely begun and Gene Senyak’s research into banjo camps, college programs, and resident workshops has already taken hin to four camps, three college programs, and one resident workshop…that’s over 3,000 miles at $3/gallon! His first field report is in this month’s Banjo Newsletter.

The reason: Lark Books (an Asheville-based division of Sterling Publishing and Barnes & Noble) is publishing his book, Banjo Camp!, in October, 2008. The book combines an overview along with profiles of teachers, a bit of history and lots of workshops. Mostly, Banjo Camp! is a banjo camp between the covers of a book.

You can help your fellow pickers and get Gene off the road (thus saving further warming of this over-heated globe). He’s looking for your own banjo camp war stories: successes, failures, funny stuff, things you learned, horror stories, people you met, life-changing, practice-changing stories, etc. If you want to share a story that’s NOT for publication, let him know.

His deadline for input is July 31. You can reach him at genesenyak@bellsouth.net or (828) 301-9673.

Gibson and Sam Bush are offering a chance to win a new Sam Bush signature model mandolin, valued at nearly $10,000. Additional prizes for the winner include 10 sets of Gibson Sam Bush mandolin strings, and an autographed copy of the live Sam Bush concert DVD.

To enter online, visit the Gibson web site and fill in the entry form.

Entries are limited to legal residents of the United States, 18 years of age or older, and must be received by October 8, 2007.

Complete contest rules can be viewed on the Gibson site.

Starting this Friday (7/20) BluegrassCountry.org will require user registration in order to access their 24/7 bluegrass audio stream online. There is no charge to register, and users will not need to log in each time they access the stream unless they clear or delete cookies from their web browser.

According to station management, the change is to foster better communication with listeners, and they want to assure everyone that personal information will never be shared with an outside entity. You can read their Privacy Policy online.

Listeners who access the feed via iTunes or some other web radio player will not be affected by the registration requirement. Only those who listen at www.bluegrasscountry.org will be asked to register.

I wondered whether this new registration requirement might have been precipitated by the new royalty rates for online audio streams, or the new reporting standards. Richard Cassidy, Director of Content Operations for both BluegrassCountry.org and WAMU said no.

“The registration is separate from any discussion about the new royalty rates and was planned well before the July 15 royalty rates deadline was established. While we still rely on listener support for 20% of our costs, and encourage listeners to become members, the registration process is free and not a reaction to the new royalty structure.”

With regard to their plans once new royalties go into effect, Richard had this to say:

“We’re holding our breath and hoping that the NPR/CPB negotiations with the recording industry will bear fruit. WAMU/Bluegrass Country will have to assess the financial impact going forward from the first payment if negotiations don’t yield a compromise.”

IIIrd Tyme Out has just announced that Edgar Loudermilk will be joining them on bass, starting July 28. We had reported in February that founding member Ray Deaton would be leaving the band at the end of 2007, but he recently announced that he would depart this month, doing his last show with 3TO on July 26 at the Musicians Against Childhood Cancer festival in Ohio.

Edgar had been performing with Marty Raybon and Full Circle, and had worked before that as a member of Rhonda Vincent & The Rage.

That makes the new lineup of 3TO Russell Moore on guitar, Steve Dilling on banjo, Wayne Benson on mandolin, Justen Haynes on fiddle, and Edgar on bass.

Ray Deaton sang and played bass with IIIrd Tyme Out since the band broke away from Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver in 1991. He also was the band’s booking agent, chores that will now be assumed by both Russell Moore and Steve Dilling.

Yesterday we reported that SoundExchange would not be “enforcing” the new royalty rate set to go in effect tomorrow. This was based on a statement made by Jon Simson, executive director of SoundExchange. Simson has since clarified, or qualified depending on your viewpoint, his statement.

For the people who want to comply with the law and are in bona fide negotiations with us, we don’t want those people to be intimidated. And we don’t want them to stop streaming. That’s just so long as they’re continuing to pay under the license they had.

What that means is, those webcasters involved in the negotiations may continue to pay royalties based on their current agreement, with no threat of legal action. Only until such a time as a new agreement is reached. Once that happens, the new rate will be retroactive to July 15, 2007, plus interest.

Also, reports that the $500 per-channel minimum has been capped are true, with a “but.” The per-channel minimum has been capped at $50,000 (meaning they’ll only charge the fee for the first 100 channels), with two stipulations.

(more…)

2007 has been a very good year for Jason Davis. This 18 year old banjo player was chosen to pick with the newly-formed Grasstowne as 2006 was drawing to a close, and has gotten rave reviews for his playing on their debut CD, The Road Headin’ Home.

He has almost completed his debut solo project, Stepping Out, expected on Pinecastle in the fall of this year. Just a bit of final mixing is left before the master is turned over to the label.

Jason tells us that the new CD will be roughly half vocal and half instrumental, and he has assembled quite a cast of supporting artists to help him on this project. Bandmates Alan Bibey (mandolin) and Phil Leadbetter (dobro) are featured, along with Tim Stafford on guitar, Zak McLamb on bass, Alan Perdue on mandolin, and Ron Stewart, Justen Haynes and Greg Luck on fiddle.

Handling the vocal chores is a stout chorus as well: Russell Moore, Steve Gulley, Junior Sisk and Jeff Parker.

The material is a mix of old and new, and Jason is very pleased with the songs he recorded.

“I wrote a couple of instrumentals, and we cut one really cool tune that Alan Bibey wrote. The vocals are all older songs that haven’t been cut in forever.

I’m really excited about this CD, and thank the folks at Pinecastle for giving me the chance to do it.”

We’ll be sure to post back with more definite news about a release date once it is announced.

With the July 15th deadline for the new internet radio royalties fast approaching, webcasters were starting to despair. But they are breathing easier today. Yesterday, at a congressional hearing, Jon Simson (executive director) of SoundExchange promised that the new rates would not be enforced (report via Wired.com). Internet radio will stay online as the two sides negotiate new rates.

One of the major issues with the new rates has been the per station minimum fee of $500. This would have been a HUGE expense for such webcasters as Pandora, Live365, and other multicasters who allow custom stations for every listener. These minimum fees are now off the table, and will be replaced by a system in which per-station minimums will be capped at $50,000 per year.

While this may all sound like good news, some of the wording I’m reading in conjunction with the announcement is somewhat troubling. Take this statement for instance.

SoundExchange and the webcasters that were part of the Copyright Royalty Board hearings are going to have another chat about the rates.

Does this mean that webcasters who were not a part of CRB hearing will still have to pay the new rates (minus the minimum fees)? Or, spared that, will they be invited to participate in this new round of rate negotiations?

One thing that seems clear is that the Copyright Royalty Board has cut itself out of the loop. The board’s refusal to a rehearing has left the continuing process to SoundExchange and the webcasters directly. If the two parties can go forward free of the royalties being collected, they may be able to come to some sort of agreement that works for everyone. After all, webcasters do need music to play, and artists need someone to play their music so fans will hear it. It seems there should be a way to work this out that benefits everyone involved, including the consumer.

Congress, it seems, will be watching the negotiations as they unfold. And the current situation does provide Congress with the time to debate the Internet Radio Equality Act (links to pdf), which would set royalties at 7.5% of revenue for webcasters, a rate very much like what they operate under presently.

Is internet radio saved? Not yet. Not until the negotiations produce a royalty rate that works in the real world for both parties. But it seems internet radio won’t die this weekend, as had been the fear prior to yesterday’s announcement.

Cherryholmes has announced the winners in a contest we told you about in late May, drawn from customers who pre-ordered a copy of their new CD, Cherryholmes II - Black and White, from their web site.

The grand prize of a Bourgeois Country Boy guitar was won by Mark Coffee of Penrose, CO. Other winners received Cherryholmes CDs, T-shirts and autographed posters.

You can see the complete list of winners on the band’s web site.

Here’s an update on a story we reported back in April…

When we passed along news that Blue Highway’s 8th CD was in the works, Tim Stafford suggested that it might be released later this year. Word now comes that Rounder is looking at a release in February, 2008.

The recording is now finished and the tracks are being mastered by Bill Wolf, with all 12 songs written or co-written by members of Blue Highway, the second band release with this all-original focus.

You can read more about this new project - with comments from Tim Stafford - in our earlier post.

Bluegrass legend Bobby Osborne has just released a his new CD, Bluegrass Melodies. Bobby has long been a favorite of mine. The smooth, clear quality of his high lonesome singing serves as a constant example of what bluegrass singing should sound like. Mr. Osborne does not disappoint on this new recording.

The band on the CD is the same band you’ll see at a show, Rocky Top X-Press. The band consists of Daryl Mosely on bass, Dana Cupp on banjo, Bobby Osborne Jr. on guitar, Mat Despain on dobro, and of course Bobby Osborne himself on mandolin. All the band members contribute vocally to the project.

The only thing you’ll hear on the CD that differs from the band is the addition of Glen Duncan’s superb fiddle playing, and a special guest vocalist on the last song (see below).

I asked Bobby what the most enjoyable part of the experience in making this CD was.

The most enjoyabe part of making the cd is having a great band to work with and my long time friend and producer Glen Duncan. His super work with the Fiddle is another one of my favorite things on the cd.

Let’s talk about the songs on this disc. The CD opens with a classic Osborne sound on the song, What Kind of Fool. If this tune sets the stage for the rest of the CD, we’re in for a good listen. (more…)

The Alison Krauss special on GAC we posted about last month, which was originally set to air this weekend, has been postponed until a later date. “Technical difficulties” is the reason given by GAC, and no rescheduled date has been announced.

This show features songs from the most recent Krauss release, A Hundred Miles Or More: A Collection, and includes duets with several of her high profile collaborators.

Read more about this special program in our earlier post.