Here’s a quick poll you can take. We’re just curious to know how often each of you stops by for a howdy.

You don’t have to be registered to participate, and the results will show right here without reloading the page.

Banjo player John Drummond was hoping for success when he started his own business, unicycle.com, in 1999, but his hopes didn’t aspire to making a living selling unicyles. By 2003 however, the business was going well enough that his wife took over day to day operations so he could start banjo.com.

Now he’s hoping to expand both businesses and possibly even start some more. But expansion costs money, so Drummond entered a contest being held by financial magazine Forbes. The contest is called Boost Your Business. Here’s how it works. Forbes accepted nearly 1,000 entries and after looking them over, selected 20 contestants to compete for a prize of $100,000. Drummond is one of those 20.

His story is featured on Forbes.com and the voting has begun. The contest is being run reality TV style, allowing site visitors to vote for their favorite contestant. The top 5 will move to the final round.

To be sure, Drummond is in the contest because of his unicycle business, but the banjo business is mentioned and there is a short video accompanying his entry/bio that features him with a banjo.

If you want to support one of our own in the larger business world, I’m sure John Drummond would appreciate your vote.

Award-winning bluegrass power couple, Terry and Cindy Baucom, will both be interviewed over the next week on WorldWideBluegrass.com.

Later today, Cindy will join WWB station manager Gracie Muldoon at 1:30 p.m. to talk about her own bluegrass radio show, Knee Deep In Bluegrass, which airs weekly on more than 50 stations throughout the US. Cindy was named as the IBMA Broadcast Personality Of The Year in 2005.

Next Friday, September 7 at 1:30, Gracie will have Terry Baucom as her guest to discuss his new signature model banjo, made by Sullivan. He’ll probably also be talking about his soon-to-be-released instructional DVD for banjo.

Terry has been prominent in several of the most groundbreaking bands in bluegrass, being a founding member of Boone Creek, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and IIIrd Tyme Out. He just recently left Doyle’s band after a return stint of more than 4 years.

Visit WorldWideBluegrass.com to hear both of the Baucoms with Gracie, where they stream bluegrass 24/7 online.

Blue Plate Special on WDVX in Knoxville will offer a live set from New Found Road today (8/31) at noon. It will be a fine chance to catch them with their newest member, Joe Bohoor, on mandolin.

New Found Road is led by singer and songwriter Tim Shelton on guitar with Randy Barnes on bass and Jr. Willaims on banjo, along with Booher on mandolin.

Singer/songwriter Jennifer Brantley will also appear on the show.

As we’ve mentioned before when bluegrass acts have appeared, WDVX broadcasts from Knoxville, TN at 89.9 FM, and listeners worldwide can catch the show via live streaming from the WDVX web site. The station does not archive these live shows, so be sure to tune in when it airs later today at noon.

Next Thursday (9/6), Blue Plate Special will feature a live performance from Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver.

UPDATE 5:30 p.m.: Thanks to eagle-eyed commenter Jerry Greer for catching an error in this post, now corrected. As it now shows, Joe Bohoor is playing mandolin with the band, and Jr. Williams is still on banjo.

This week’s Musicians Tip from BluegrassCountry.org comes from banjo man Bill Emerson. Bill earned his reputation as a solid picker with Jimmy Martin and The Country Gentlemen, and then served as a musician in the US Navy Band, Country Current where he played banjo and led the group.

Bill shares his thoughts about stage presence in his brief (1 minute) audio presentation. Find it at BluegrassCountry.org, where you can listen to each of their Musicians Tips segments. A new segment is added each week, with bluegrass music professionals sharing their wisdom and experience.

Emerson has a new CD due out next month, Bill Emerson & The Sweet Dixie Band, which will feature Bill with his new group, and guest appearances from Paul Williams and Randy Waller.

CDBaby has long been the entry point for independent artists longing for digital distribution. Creating a CDBaby account would give you the channel for getting your music in iTunes and other online digital download services.

Now CDBaby has launched a new feature that allows for all CDs distributed digitally through them to be available for download directly from them on the artist’s CDBaby page.

This new arrangement does not allow for individual track downloads however. Only full CDs may be purchased for download from CDBaby. The cost is variable depending on the price set by the artist. The download price is the same as the physical CD price.

Even with the lack of individual track downloads, there is much to recommend this new service. A digital CD is downloaded as a zip file containing all tracks in unprotected, high quality (200kbps) MP3 format, a high resolution cover image, and a text file containing the liner notes.

Even better, for the artist who is selling, is that CDBaby only keeps their standard 9% for digital sales. That means an album selling for $9.99 will net the artist $9.09 when sold on CDBaby.com. That same album distributed by CDBaby and sold via iTunes would result in an artist payment of only $6.37.

As an example of what this looks like on the CDBaby website, I’ve chosen On A Farm. It’s the latest CD from the band Acoustic Endeavors, of which our very own John Lawless is the banjo picker.

If you are itching to join the digital download game as an independent artist, CDBaby is making it easier than ever.

Last year around this time, we told you about Lonesome River Band banjo picker Sammy Shelor’s side business when fall rolls around. He and his wife Sue plant a field of corn each spring, not to bring to market, but as the base for their annual Corn Acoustics corn maze.

Last year’s maze was cut in the shape of the Crooked Road logo, a southwest Virginia tourism and music project with which Sammy has been involved. This year’s maze isn’t cut into so intricate a design - though it does honor the 25th Anniversary of Lonesome River Band - but Sammy says the maze is a bit more challenging to navigate.

“We’ve got some tricky trails cut. I was mowing in there the other day and got lost myself!”

The Grand Opening of Corn Acoustics is over this coming Labor Day Weekend (9/1-3), and will include bluegrass entertainment each day at no additional charge.

Find out more on the official maze web site.

Look for Alison Krauss as a guest on the Friday, August 31 edition of Nightline, the long-running ABC nightly news program. She’ll be on for a regular Nightline feature called Playlist, where prominent pop artists discuss their favorite songs - what’s on their playlist.

She taped this segment when the band was in New York recently for an AKUS tour stop.

Nightline typically airs following the late local news on ABC affiliate stations, but you might want to double check for air time in your market.

Video from the Playlist segments also appear on the ABC News web site after they have aired, so check that video archive if you miss Friday’s broadcast.

In 2002, Centerstream Publishing published a book by author Randy Noles entitled Orange Blossom Boys. The book explored the history of the tune by the same name and the lives of Ervin T. Rouse, Chubby Wise, and Johnny Cash.

Noles has done further research since that time and decided to update the book and republish it under a new title. Also published by Centerstream, Fiddler’s Curse is now in print.

The new book give full credit to Rouse for authorship of the tune. Here’s the description from Amazon.com

One of the most bizarre stories in all of popular music is the history of “Orange Blossom Special,” arguably the century’s best-known fiddle tune. The man credited with its ownership, Ervin T. Rouse, endured tragedy, alcoholism and mental illness. He spent his last years fiddling for tips in isolated taverns at the edge of the Everglades, and died all but unknown. The man who claimed co-ownership, Chubby Wise, achieved fame as the seminal fiddler of the bluegrass genre, but struggled to overcome personal demons and to heal the scars of childhood abandonment and abuse. Johnny Cash, the tortured superstar who made the song a mainstream hit, quietly championed Rouse and earned the enmity of Wise. This trio’s disparate legacies are here told - and forever linked with the legendary diesel steamliner.

Hat Tip: European Bluegrass Blog

Here’s a fun YouTube clip we found on Sam Bush’s web site. Those of us of a certain age will get a kick out of seeing a pop icon like Ringo Starr speaking excitedly about artists held in high esteem by fans of acoustic string music - like Sam Bush.

The clip has Ringo extolling the virtues of an upcoming book from noted Nashville photographer Jim McGuire (Senór McGuire as he is known to many), the galleys of which Ringo is thumbing in the video. The traveling exhibit of 60 McGuire photos which Brance posted about last month will be reproduced in book form in the near future.

Nashville Portraits- Legends of Country Music by Jim McGuire is set for an October 1, 2007 release from Lyons Press. All of the photos are reproduced in their original black and white, printed on heavy stock and hardbound.

A great many bluegrass artists who have been the subject of McGuire’s photos are featured, including Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, JD Crowe & The New South, Marty Stuart, John Hartford, Béla Fleck, Lester Flatt and Vassar Clements.

And now… here’s Ringo.

When Alison Krauss & Union Station played a show in Norfolk, VA a few weeks ago, banjo/guitar player Ron Block made a brief side trip to the studios of The 700 Club to tape a segment for the popular Christian-themed program.

The show will air on Thursday August 30 and features Ron performing the song Someone from his recent Rounder release, Doorway. Ron is also interviewed during his segment, and he says that they included a number of photos from Ron’s younger days. Sounds like a hoot!

You can find broadcast details by visiting The 700 Club web site. Past shows are available for online vieweing within a day or so of its broadcast airing in The 700 Club archives.

Once again, as we have done the past two years, The Bluegrass Blog is hosting an unofficial awards poll which mirrors the 2007 IBMA Awards nominees. It is not affiliated with the IBMA or their official balloting process, and run just for fun and to give our readers who are not voting members of the IBMA a chance to register their preferences.

Take a look at how our readers did in 2006 as compared to the IBMA voters in this review of last year’s outcomes.

To vote, you must be logged in as a registered user on The Bluegrass Blog, and only one vote per user is allowed. We don’t pretend that this poll is scientific in any way, but we do want to make it as valid as possible.

Registration is free and there are no strings attached to becoming a registered user.

Before you vote, you can visit our listing of this year’s IBMA Nominees, which has links to the various nominees’ web sites and audio files to help you make an informed choice.

Come on in and cast your vote, and let’s see how The Bluegrass Blog readers match up in ‘07 with the voting membership of IBMA when it comes to handing out awards.

Register here
Vote here - The Bluegrass Blog Awards Poll
Vote tallies - The Bluegrass Blog Awards Poll Results

The Nashville Songwriters Association International has announced its 2007 nominees for induction into its Hall of Fame.

The list is divided into two categories, songwriter and songwriter/artist. The songwriter category is for persons who do not have a career as an artist, but have achieved a measure of commercial success or recognition at least 20 years ago. The songwriter/artist category is for those persons who do have a career as an artist and have also achieved success as songwriters.

This year’s list includes the names of bluegrass legends Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs. Of course, they are in the songwriter/artist category along with four other nominees. One of the five nominees in this category will be chosen for induction into the Hall of Fame at a dinner scheduled for October 14, 2007.

The group of nominees was recommended to the board by the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Foundation (NaSHOF) Nominating Committee, which is comprised of Hall of Fame members and Music Row historians. Votes are cast by Hall of Fame members, Professional Songwriter members of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), and the boards of the NaSHOF and NSAI.

In addition to Flatt & Scruggs, Paul Craft and L.E. White are both nominated in the songwriter category. Both of these writers have had ties to the bluegrass community over the years.

The complete list of nominees, along with biographical information on each one, is available here.

Rounder has posted audio samples online from their upcoming Robert Plant/Alison Krauss release, due October 23. Bluegrass purists may argue that information about this CD has no place on The Bluegrass Blog, as there is little - if any - bluegrass music to be found there.

And they would be half right. Raising Sand is a departure from Krauss’ bluegrass outings, but the truth is that it is much closer to one of her recordings than anything Plant recorded with Led Zeppelin, from whence most fans of pop or rock music will know his work.

Some of the music does reflect Plant’s folk leanings, which popped up occasionally on Zep records and his later albums, but the publicity materials for the new collaboration give much of the credit to celebrated producer, T. Bone Burnett.

It all began quietly, in Alison’s Nashville home. Sitting side by side, with Burnett quietly lining out chord changes on guitar, Plant and Krauss sang. There were no microphones, no effects – nothing to hide behind or escape into. “The idea was to take them both out of their comfort zone,” Burnett reflects. “To take us all out of our comfort zones.” As one of the finest harmony singers in any style of music, Krauss worked carefully with Plant to develop a blend, telepathically following the contours of his phrasing. New to such intensive two-part harmony, Plant paired down his vocal style to its most basic components – resulting in some of the most affecting, soulful singing he has yet captured on tape. “I don’t get nervous really,” Plant said of those early sessions. “But I realized once I started sitting down on that couch, I was in for a ride.” As they grew more comfortable with the songs and the way their voices complimented one another, they stepped into the studio….

Burnett had assembled an intriguing group of musicians, with a core of guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Dennis Crouch, and drummer Jay Bellerose occasionally augmented by guitarist Norman Blake and multi-instrumentalist Mike Seeger. Caution and trepidation gave way to an amazingly fruitful run of sessions, spanning only ten days but resulting in almost the entire album. Burnett nurtured the music endlessly, encouraging the musicians to disregard the past and simply play the songs their way. The sound gelled quickly, as a roomful of strangers became an empathetic, organically telepathic band in a matter of hours.

Another interesting note about Raising Sand is that Rounder plans to release it on both audio CD and vinyl LP formats.

Check out the audio samples at Rounder.com, and see if you think it should be covered here.

UPDATE 12:30 p.m.: Thanks to a commenter on an earlier post, we found this video that Rounder created as a promo for the CD. It features a discussion with Robert and Alison, along with some audio previews from the CD.

When we reported over the weekend that Audie Blaylock had left Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, Audie had not made a statement regarding his future plans.

It turns out that he is reassembling his band, Redline, and is now accepting dates for the remainder of 2007 and beyond. He wants to ensure everyone that he will continue to perform and record the hard driving, traditional bluegrass music his many fans have come to expect.

For the short term, Audie is handling dates for Redline himself, and information on how to reach him can be found on his web site, where you can also find audio samples from his recordings.

As promised, here is the full 30 minute documentary on The Infamous Stringdusters, Four Days Of Infamy.

It was created by Nashville filmmaker Craig Havighurst of String Theory Media, and shot during a four day Colorado tour he took with the band in March. Craig shot the band on stage, backstage, in rehearsal - and traveling in the van - to compile a revealing look at this dynamic young bluegrass group.

You’ll see them perform at several CO venues, and catch interviews with each of the band’s members. John Cowan narrates, and we hope you will watch the whole thing.

Thanks to Sugar Hill Records and The Dusters for choosing The Bluegrass Blog to debut this video online.

Jim Hurst is a great bluegrass guitar player, as attested by his multiple wins at IBMA, but he’s also very gifted in other styles of music. On his latest CD, A Box Of Chocolates, you get a little taste of the various style’s Jim likes to sample from time to time.

The songs range from solo guitar instrumentals, to full band pieces with harmony vocals. Some are bluegrass in nature, while others have more of a blues feel, swing approach, or finger-picking style. There are uptempo instrumentals, and slow ballads. A lot of variety, just as you’d expect from A Box Of Chocolates.

Guest artists on the CD include luminaries such as Sam Bush, Mark Schatz, Scott Vestal, Dennis Crouch, Buck White, Claire Lynch, Jeremy Garrett, and others.

A Box Of Chocolates contains a lot of different musical tastes, but they are all good. Jim is aware of the difficulty of selling such a product though, as reflected in this comment from the liner notes.

Well I ain’t ever been a commercially viable produt anyway, so why not record a CD that makes at least one person happy? ME! So, this is it…A Box Of Chocolates.

That may be stating it a little strongly, as I’m sure Jim will find that many people will find a smile on their face while listening to this latest recording of his.

A Box Of Chocolates is now available for purchase directly from Jim’s website.

Here’s a follow-up to a post from this past June, about movie and television actress Mare Winningham having released a spiritual CD of folk and bluegrass tinged music, but framed by her perspective as a recent convert to Judaism.

The CD is entitled Refuge Rock Sublime, and has attracted some attention from the Jewish press.

Winngham recently appeared at a bluegrass festival in Arkansas, singing her songs during the Sunday Gospel show at the Eureka Springs Bluegrass Festival. This generated two stories about the Torah/Gospel convergence, one in The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and the other at JewishJournal.com.

Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find anything about the performance itself, as both the stories referenced above were written in advance of the festival.

Read more about Refuge Rock Sublime in our earlier post. You can find a music video for one of the songs from the CD, Valley Of The Dry Bones, on JewishJournal.com (scroll down for the video).

Troy Engle has joined The Isaacs, playing both guitar and banjo, replacing Kevin Haynie who recently left the band. He had previously been a member of The Mark Newton band, and worked with Buddy Jewell and Patty Loveless.

The Isaacs report that Troy is a natural fit, and since he has been a fan of their music for so long, working him in has been a breeze.

You can find The Isaacs’ tour schedule online to catch them when they come to your part of the world.

Herb Sandker, husband of Rhonda Vincent and President of Upper Management Inc., was hospitalized briefly this weekend after experiencing chest and arm pains on Friday (8/24). Rhonda left the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival where she was performing Friday, and was able to join him at the hospital on Saturday morning.

Herb is being released today (8/26) after having three stents put in. The doctors do not believe that he had a heart attack, but did find significant blockage in his arteries. We live in an age of marvelous medical procedures.

Upper Management handles booking for Rhonda Vincent & The Rage, Nothin’ Fancy and Williams & Clark Expedition. Promoters will surely understand if their calls are returned a bit late this week.

UPDATE 8/27: Herb has posted his own overview of the weekend’s events on the Rhonda Vincent message board.