The International Bluegrass Music Association has released the final attendance figures for last month’s week long convention, the IBMA’s first to be held in Nashville, TN.

Dan Hays, IBMA Executive Director, reports that the cumulative attendance over the course of the week was 22,790 - up 21.2% from the previous year. This figure includes each actual entry to the various events, and week long attendees will have been counted repeatedly in this figure. The stat is still a useful one in helping the IBMA track the actual traffic on site during the week.

During the Monday-Thursday Business Conference (10/24-27), 1918 unique attendees were registered, with 6591 cumulative visits over that time - an increase of 10.4%. Some other interesting numbers from the Business Conference:

• 91 Exhibitors
• 19 Showcasing Artists (Avg. Attendance - 700/Show)
• 306 “After Hours” Artist Showcases
• 21 Professional Development Seminars (Attendance up 38%)
• 148 Mentor Sessions on 30 topics
• 510 “Gig Fair” Appointments (Event producers and Artists/Agents)

The Awards Show at The Ryman Auditorium on 10/27 had a sold out attendance of 2,189 and has subsequently been broadcast on more than 390 IBMA Radio Network affiliates, up 18% from last year. They estimate the total audience for these broadcasts at greater than 25 million worldwide.

The weekend Fan Fest (10/28-30) reports 5630 unique attendees, with 14,010 cumulative over the three days - up 33.2%. More than 40 acts performed on four stages and 89 exhibitors were set up in the exhibit hall.

All in all, the numbers seem to be representative of positive trends for the association and their efforts to promote both bluegrass music and the artists, businesses and instrument manufacturers that support it.

IBMA has also announced the confirmed dates for the next two years’ conventions in Nashville:

• 2006: September 25-October 1
• 2007: October 1-7

We just heard from Mike Lawing with the International Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro, KY. Mike was passing along some details about the reprise of the IBMM Fan Feast during IBMA week in Nashville. This event was a fundraiser to benefit the Museum’s Video Oral History Project (VOHP).

Mike reports that they raised over $12,000 during the Fan Feast and Auction, held on October 29 in Nashville, but some of that will be absorbed by hotel costs. This event, where bluegrass luminaries serve breakfast to those who attend the event, was a staple of the early days of the IBMA convention in Owensboro, and it was brought back this past week for IBMA’s debut event in Nashville.

The funds generated by ticket sales went mostly to the costs associated with hosting the event (food, room rental, etc) with only about $2 from each $30 ticket making its way into the museum’s coffers. The bulk of the monies raised at the Fan Feast came from the auction proceeds.

The Museum’s VOHP is crucial work, dedicated to chronicling the lives of 223 performers which they have designated as being a part of the First Generation of bluegrass artists. As we prepare to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the birth of bluegrass music in 2006, we realize the importance of reaching the remaining pioneers of our music whose contributions have not been amply recorded and preserved in a timely manner.

Mike especially asked that we make an appeal on behalf of the Museum that anyone with a bluegrass or bluegrass music-related web site consider placing a copy of the Museum logo on their site, along with a link to the IBMM site to help spread the word about the VOHP, and their need to raise the requisite funds as quickly as possible.

Most of you who are IBMA members probably received this via email a day or two ago, but we felt it was worth publishing here.

To the IBMA,

I would like to thank you for the two awards that I received this past Thursday, October 27th at The Ryman Auditorium. It was a dream come true for me to have the honor of being named “Dobro Player Of The Year,” and also have my CD Slide Effects named “Instrumental Album of the Year.” I can’t even begin to tell you all the emotions that one feels when you hear your name called. I always dreamed of one day getting an IBMA award, but like I said, I only dreamed. I never thought in a million years this could happen to me! I am also very proud knowing that I am only the third recipient of the IBMA’s Dobro Player Of The Year Award. I feel so lucky to be in the presence of both Jerry Douglas and Rob Ickes who were the only players to ever win this award. I hope that I can carry it with the same dignity, class, and respect that they both have. I was also very honored to share the ballot with Mike Auldridge and Randy Kohrs, two players that I admire very much, and deserve this just as much as I do.

I also want to personally thank all the members of the IBMA, who voted for me this year on such a tough ballot. I want to thank all the radio personalities and stations, who added me to their play lists. Thanks also to the fans and friends who have supported me during the 32 years I have spend in this business.

Not only winning these two awards, but also getting to accept them on the stage of the world famous Ryman Auditorium made the event even more awesome!

I thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart.

Sincerely,

Phil Leadbetter
2005 IBMA “Dobro Player of the Year”
2005 IBMA “Instrumental Recording of the Year”

Visit Phil online: www.unclephilonline.com www.wildfireband.com

We just received this note from Casey Henry:

The Nashville Metro Police department has recovered two stolen instruments. A banjo and a mandolin. If anyone wants to claim them they should contact Detective Mavity at 615-862-7611.

The Nashville police must be somewhat hip to bluegrass, since they contacted The Station Inn with the news. It isn’t clear whether these recovered instruments may have been stolen from or at the IBMA convention, but if anyone did suffer such a loss while attending the event, hopefully this will lead them back home.

We had a brief discussion on Sunday with IBMA Executive Director Dan Hays about attendance at this past week’s events in Nashville. As always, Dan was careful not to be too specific since final numbers aren’t all in, but early counts point to some big increases in attendance.

Dan said that the trade show looked to have increased registration by about 7%-8%, and that attendance at Fan Fest was up in the order of 40%! I’m sure that the actual attendance figures will be released when final accounting has been completed

Those are great numbers, and everyone involved in planning and promoting the event should take a bow.

WARNING: Inside baseball follows. If you aren’t an IBMA member or don’t work in the business in some capacity, much of this lengthy post may not hold much interest for you.

IBMA 2005 is now over. Most of us are home and sleeping in our own beds again. John and I had a lot of conversations throughout the week about the event, and people’s impressions of it. Overall, it seems that attendees found a lot of good things that happened with this year’s move to Nashville. There were also a few downsides that were mentioned.

Perhaps the biggest positive we saw was the increased focus on the “business conference” aspect of the event. That was a point raised repeatedly by exhibitors and folks who work in the industry, and as a business person in attendance myself, I appreciated the increased security and the clamp down on unregistered persons crashing the event. There are festivals all year long where a focus on jamming and hanging out are part of the scene, but the IBMA Trade Show is not meant to be the place for that. Nothing wrong with jamming, I enjoy it myself. It’s part of the music and should be facilitated, but might perhaps not be the primary reason people attend during the week. The increased focus on this being a business conference made it eminently easier to conduct business. (more…)

Here, with our apologies for tardiness, is another gallery of photos that Dan Loftin took at the IBMA Awards Show last Thursday evening.

Click here to see the gallery

The recent IBMA Awards have been covered in the mainstream press here in the US, and we have posted links to a few stories that we found.

This morning, we found one on the BBC News web site, originally posted on Friday October 28. What a marvelous thing to see our IBMA covered in so many areas of the new media, and so soon after the awards were announced.

We would love to post any other links that people may find, especially any additional coverage in the US entertainment-specific media. Please send us anything you may find via our Response Form.

Well, it’s Sunday morning, and Brance and I will be headed back home sometime today. We still have a great many photos to pore through, and get the best of them up on the site, but we have to tear down our exhibit booth and pack everything for the return trip, and won’t be back online until sometime on Monday morning. We have some more news and information that we picked up here in Nashville that we’ll report once we are back home and get some sleep!

This has been a terrific week for The Bluegrass Blog. The positive response we have received from artists and businesspeople in the bluegrass community has been very encouraging, and the dramatic increase in site visits and your comments to us via our Response Form have been a shot in the arm as well.

We have recorded several hours worth of interviews here at IBMA which we will soon begin releasing in the form of a weekly podcast. We still have some technical and administrative details to conclude, but hope to have our first podcast with IBMA week interviews available next week.

Thanks to everyone who spent some time with us online this week.

The Business Conference portion of the IBMA World Of Bluegrass is over and we are firmly into the Fan Fest. I’m pretty tired from a full week of activities, but I did make it out to several of the shows yesterday.

After all the speculation and rumor about the Lonesome River Band was dispelled by Sammy, I was curious to go hear LRB. (more…)

We found a few more articles in the online versions of print papers covering the IBMA events this past week.

The Nashville City Paper had a story earlier in the week about the IBMA Business Conference, and a new one yesterday about the Fan Fest.

The Herald Dispatch in Huntington, WV has a story about Don Rigsby being recognized as producer for Larry Sparks’ Recorded Event Of The Year and Album Of The Year awards for 40

Here is a link to the story filed by John Gerome of The Associated Press, with whom we shared the makeshift “press room” at The Ryman on Thursday night. It’s from The Washington Post’s online side.

Billboard.com, the online version of Billboard magazine, has a brief article about the IBMA Awards, written by Deborah Evans Price. It doesn’t contain any news for readers of The Bluegrass Blog, but it is worth noting that the larger music industry finds our Awards Show newsworthy.

Here are some of the terrific photos Tami Roth took at the Ryman last night.

Click here to see the gallery

Last evenings award show brought a few surprises, to most of us I’m sure. Of course the big surprise was Cherryholmes winning Entertainer Of The Year. I’m glad they won, though I had really expected them to win Emerging Artist Of The Year, as did the readers who voted in our poll. My last post was a side by side comparison of the official winners and our poll winners. We’ve talked to a lot of people who have expressed surprise, and in some cases delight, over the awards. We received one email from a reader who did a great job of expressing his view of the awards. Here is his email: (more…)

Here are the IBMA 2005 Awards Winners, side by side with the winners of our poll.

Instrumental Performers of the Year

Special Awards - These are awarded by special committee

• Bluegrass Broadcaster of the Year - Cindy Baucom; “Knee Deep in Bluegrass” syndicated program; Elkin, N.C.


• Bluegrass Event of the Year - WinterGrass; Tacoma, Wash.; Feb. 2005
• Bluegrass Print Media Person of the Year - Stephanie P. Ledgin, author of Homegrown Music: Discovering Bluegrass (Greenwood Publishing
  Group)


• Best Graphic Design for a Recorded Project - Wayne Brezinka (designer),Various Artists, The Unbroken Circle: The Musical Heritage of the Carter Family, Dualtone Records


• Best Liner Notes for a Recorded Project - Jon Hartley Fox (liner notes), Red Allen, Lonesome and Blue: The Complete County Recordings, Rebel Records

Well, the Awards Show has come and gone. We had a great time live blogging the event. We did have a few problems with the server last night and some people may have experienced difficulty accessing the site for a time. It seems we had so many people on the site at once that we temporarily overwhelmed the server. We’ll be looking into upgrading our server capabilities as soon as we can.

We are working on getting some photos up from last night. We have a LOT of photos and we are trying to choose the ones that best represent the spirit of the event. Dan Loftin and Tami Roth both worked hard last night, as they have all week, to capture essence of the Awards Show in photos, and they did a wonderful job.

We will also be publishing an analysis of the winners, with some thoughts and opinion, as well as a comparison of last night’s awards to the winners of The Bluegrass Blog Awards Poll.

The exhibit area opens in about 2 hours, and we’ll be heading down to record some reactions from the fans and performers alike.

Stand by…

Here are a few more of the photos Dan Loftin has taken during IBMA week. We actually have more - dozens more - that we will pore through and post over the next few days, but some may not get up until next week. Brance and I are committed in the exhibit hall all day for this next three days, but will be posting as we can in the evenings.

Click here to see the gallery

Well, we’re done, folks. What a great show!

Sorry for the server problems. That is first thing on the list when we get back to the hotel - as soon as we grab some dinner!

We hope it wasn’t a major annoyance, and thanks for spending Awards Show night with The Bluegrass Blog. We have a ton of photos which we will get uploaded as soon as we can.

The following awards are determined by special procedures and committees are enlisted to review recommendations, consider nominations related to the criteria and determine recipients. Finalists were recognized and winners announced at the Special Awards Luncheon, earlier today at The Renaissance Hotel here in Nashville.

The Bluegrass Broadcaster Of The Year for 2005 is:

The Best Graphic Design for a Recorded Project for 2005 is:

The Best Liner Notes for a Recorded Project for 2005 is awarded to:

Ricky Skaggs is leading the Finale performance of the evening. As the show winds to and end they sang It’s Mighty Dark For Me To Travel with Doyle Lawson hitting the high part and Ricky singing lead. The stage is filled with some of the best talent in bluegrass music, most of them in tuxedos.

Del McCoury then rendered I Hear A Sweet Voice Calling with Alison Krauss cutting the tenor part.

For their final number the ensemble tore into a rousing rendition of Bluegrass Breakdown.