Slate.com recently ran an article about Steve Martin entitled: Late-Period Steve Martin. The subtitle proves helpful in understanding what the piece is about: How to understand the actor, novelist, essayist, playwright, banjo player, crotch-centric variety show performer, and Oscar co-host.

The author’s concern is to answer the question of how? While his more recent efforts in film, music, comedy, and the arts seem to be haphazard, with many proving commercially and critically unsuccessful, while many of his contemporaries have faded from the entertainment limelight, how has Steve Martin managed to remain popular, successful, and in demand? The author maintains that the answer lies in Martin’s unique comic style which relys on the collision of nostalgia with the modern world.

He is a nostalgia artist. From the years of his first wild ascent, his signature has been to reach toward a lost cultural moment and remake it in his own time. The collision of those two worlds, past and present, gives his comedy its distinctive flavor.

While closing his argument that such is indeed the case, the author mentions Martin’s foray into the world of bluegrass music as an element of nostalgic in which the artist has indulged himself.

Let’s be honest: What’s more quaint, and out-of-time, and culturally beside-the-point than bluegrass?

This comment has stirred up quite a fervor among the online citizens of our little corner of the cultural landscape known as bluegrass. (more…)

Lou and Christy Reid grace the cover of the March/April 2010 issue of Bluegrass Music Profiles. The lengthy interview with Lou covers his growing up with bluegrass, his first bands, his days with Doyle Lawson and Ricky Skaggs, and his current activities with Seldom Scene, Longview and Lou Reid & Carolina.

Here’s Lou recalling a memory of John Duffey…

“When we pulled into the Festival of the Bluegrass, someone at the gate didn’t know who he was. He got out of the car, opened the trunk, got a record out and showed it to the gatekeeper  saying, ‘See, I’m that guy right there.’ “

BMP publisher Kevin Kerfoot gives a thumbnail sketch of the new issue:

“The new issue also includes a color glossy Blue Highway poster; DJ Profile of Tom Henderson; Bill McBee’s Thoughts From Masters Of Ceremony; Blue Grass Boys Memories with Bob Jones; a two-page interview with Monroe Crossing; Shop Talk with IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year Jesse Brock; Eric Gibson and Woody Platt’s Bluegrass Favorites; a feature story on The European World Of Bluegrass; and a Songwriter Profile with Grass Cats’ Russell Johnson.”

You can find subscription details online.

Arcadia Publishing has a wide-ranging series of photo books in their Images of America collection. Aimed primarily at regional markets, each book assembles iconic local images into attractive paperback editions that are sold in bookstores and gift shops in the vicinity.

Some titles have a statewide focus, and it is one of these that caught our attention. Kentucky’s Bluegrass Music contains more than 100 pages of wonderful images, tracing the contributions of Kentucky musicians to bluegrass music from the 1930s to today. The photos were collected by James C. Claypool from a wide variety of sources (all credited in the book). The book is printed on heavy, gloss stock and the 200 plus images are left in their original state – not repaired or enhanced for publication.

Following a brief introduction for the befit of the uninitiated, the photo display begins, divided into ten chapters.

Each photo gets its own descriptive paragraph and while I won’t pretend that he didn’t miss anyone, Claypool has put together a fairly exhaustive compendium of important figures in Kentucky bluegrass. Of course there are several images of the big guys, like Bill Monroe, JD Crowe and Ricky Skaggs, but it is the photos of lesser-known artists and personalities that provide some of the book’s greatest pleasures.

That and the always-entertaining pictures of popular pickers when they were much younger.

The publishers have graciously allowed us to include a few photographs from the book, to offer a taste of what you’ll find in Kentucky’s Bluegrass Music. (Reprinted with permission from Kentucky’s Bluegrass Music, by James C. Claypool.  Available from the publisher online at www.arcadiapublishing.com or by calling 888-313-2665.)

I have certainly enjoyed going through this book. There are a few inaccuracies and omissions in the photo captions, but not anywhere near enough to really raise a quibble.

Any bluegrass fan will appreciate having a copy of Kentucky’s Bluegrass Music. Orders can be placed online.

Bluegrass Unlimited just published a nice article about the 50th anniversary of Chuck Ogsbury’s entrance into the world of banjo building. The article chronicles the story of Ogsbury’s early forays into instrument construction and business ownership. He started Ode Banjos and ran it for a time before selling the brand to Baldwin Piano Company.

Ogsbury took a 5 year hiatus, due in part to a non-compete clause in the sale of the company. But soon found he was drawn back into the world of the banjo and began his second company, Ome Banjos. Both companies were founded on innovation and targeted a particular segment of the market in which Ogsbury saw a need. Today Ome Banjos is still innovating and going strong.

For those with an interest in banjos, bluegrass history, or small business ventures, the article should prove to be interesting reading.