The International Bluegrass Music Association has announced the names of the participants in the 2009 class of Leadership Bluegrass.

Leadership Bluegrass, now in its 10th year and with more than 200 alumni, is an intensive three-day program of advanced level, interactive learning experiences that invites participants to examine the challenges and opportunities facing our music along with related leadership issues.

The forthcoming program takes place at the BMI offices, in Nashville, Tennessee, from Tuesday, March 10 through to Thursday, March 12 and includes seminars on such topics as The State of the Industry and a Profile of the Bluegrass Consumer, Songwriting and Publishing (in two parts), Getting Music to Consumers (in five parts) and The Artist’s Team (in two parts).

A sample of some of the presenters for the 2009 program include The Del McCoury Band, Dan Keen (ASCAP VP), Pete Fisher (Grand Ole Opry General Manager), Brian Smith (co-founder and VP of Value Music Concepts), and Anastasia Brown (award-winning producer, President of 821 Entertainment Group and Nashville Star judge).

My thanks are due to Trisha Tubbs, of the Leadership Bluegrass Planning Committee, for provide much of the above information.

One of the members of the class of 2008, Katy Daley, speaks highly of the IBMA and the opportunity that she had to attend the class and learn more about the bluegrass music business ….

“Fred Bartenstein serves as the facilitator and does a great job of keeping all 25 participants on point and on time. Fred sees to it that every person is heard and that no one person or group gets to dominate the conversation. You’re seated with different people during each session so that by the end of the week you’ve had a chance to get to know every attendee. Guest speakers stay and participate in the next ’social’ activity, i.e., lunch, coffee break or dinner so you get a chance to talk with them on an informal basis. This networking was a very important part of the week for me.

It’s easy to go to work every day and repeat what’s worked in the past. The Leadership Bluegrass guest speakers were from all parts of the ‘bluegrass industry’ — performers, teachers, luthiers, lawyers, songwriters, public relations, agents/managers and media. I suppose the most obvious eye-opening topic is what’s going on in the digital world. But every speaker revealed methods and techniques they’re using now and discussed how they’re going to handle the trends they see coming. It made me think about how I could apply that information to my job and how it could polish up my act.

Guess you can tell I really got something out of it; can’t recommend it enough.” (more…)

Well, almost…

Willem Ruiter lives in Voorthuizen, the Netherlands. This town plays home to the EWOB each year.

A great fan of the music, Willem is making his contribution to the bluegrass online world by attempting to assemble in one location as many bluegrass links as he can round up.

His site contains listings for bands hailing from various countries around the globe. The listing is obviously incomplete at this stage (with a near improbability of ever being COMPLETE), but still impressive. The list of US bands, while one of the longer lists on the page, is far from inclusive. One list that is very impressive already is the list of bands from the Czech Republic. The list was too long to count!

Other countries represented include: Austria, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Norway, Slovak Republik, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, the UK, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, and Australia.

In addition to band listings, he is also assembling links to: web radio, associations, labels, online record stores, bluegrass magazines & publications, instrument builders, and more.

It is an interesting way to spend an hour, just clicking to all these various websites!

One notable absence on his site is a link to The Bluegrass Blog, or any blog for that matter! Oh well, we won’t hold it against him!

HT: European Bluegrass Blog

Delheads have two chances to experience his Delness this weekend from the comfort of their homes or workplaces.

This morning (1/30) just after 9:00 a.m., he will join Katy Daley on WAMU’s Bluegrass Country to talk about he and the band’s plans for ‘09. Katy tells us that she expects to discuss the upcoming McCoury retrospective project, 50-50 (Fifty Songs for Fifty Years), Delfest 2009… and the Big 7-0!

Del turns 70 years old this Sunday, February 1.

Listen to Katy online at www.bluegrasscountry.org, or on HD Radio 88.5 channel 2 in the DC metro area.

On Saturday, you can catch the Del McCoury Band on The Marty Stuart Show on RFD-TV. The show airs at 8:00 p.m. (EST) and is carried on DIRECTV and many cable carriers throughout the US.

They will pick and sing, and talk with Marty about all things Del.

Special Consensus mandolinist Ashby Frank has agreed to send us updates and photos from their current tour of Britain and Ireland. Ashby is unsure how much web access he will have during the tour, but promises to send his musings whenever he has the chance.

I’ve been home for 1 day out of the last 21 days, and performed on 18 of those days‚Ķ sometimes twice. Wow. This is the longest string of gigs that I"ve ever had, and I wouldn’t be very truthful if I didn’t say that I’m very ready to be home and sleep in my own bed, work out a little, then maybe watch a movie, and not have to search for wifi everywhere!

Right now I’m in a very friendly Stir Fry Restaurant in the University District of Belfast, buying wi-fi from a British Telecom Hotspot that’s somewhere around here. It’s very interesting‚Ķ the bigger the town, the harder it is to find free wi-fi.

Since I wrote last, we’ve been over a good bit of England, drove back to Scotland, took another ferry back to Belfast, and played a show here in town last night.

Even though I really didn’t get to see the sights at all, England was nice. We stayed in one small town, and then had two nights in the larger cities of Nottingham and Bristol. Everything is so compact (including the streets) and to me it feels like everyone lives on top of each other. We’ve driven through or gotten lost in some of the larger towns here, like Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Nottingham, and Liverpool, and despite their age they all have very well kept up and thriving downtown areas or “city centres,” and there are so many things, new and old, that look and sound so interesting to me, we just don’t have the time!

Oh and as a side note, we found Greg’s long lost twin in England…

As we travel from place to place, back and forth across the sea and across ancient borders and boundaries, playing in everything from small pubs and hotel ball rooms to larger festivals, I do notice a huge difference in accents and certain customs, and things do look a bit different from place to place. The one thing I can’t stress enough is how friendly most everyone is, no matter where we’ve been. I sure am glad we haven’t been somewhere for this long where they don’t speak English! I’ve experienced that a few times before and it makes getting around pretty hard.

Last night’s show was really the first one where we didn’t have a good crowd. We had a radio interview scheduled to promote the show yesterday, but the economic news here isn’t very good and it’s dominating the headlines and stole our spot away. Oh well! Good music cures the blues, don’t they know that?

We did get to share the stage with our good friends the Tennessee Hennessy’s. Check them out if you’re ever around Belfast!

OK… well BritTel time is about to run out, and I have to go get ready for the next show. Only 6 more to go!