Country crooner Dierks Bentley tells Vernell Hackett of The Boot that he plans to record a bluegrass album during 2010.

Bentley has a long history of including bluegrass music on his chart-topping releases, and has collaborated several times with The Grascals and other Nashville grassers. He was a fixture on the bluegrass scene in Music City prior to his country career taking off, and even studied bluegrass mandolin with Butch Baldassari.

From The Boot…

“Nashville is my hometown; I’ve been here 15 years, so I know a bunch of the grassers, a lot of the country guys, a lot of songwriters and musicians,” Dierks explains. “Every album I’ve done has a bluegrass song on it, so it’s not a surprise that one day I might make a bluegrass record. It would be a cool thing for me.”

We hope to learn more about this soon.

Sugar Hill Records has just released a download-only album in iTunes which consists of the Top 50 tracks from their deep catalog of bluegrass and Americana music. Members of the Sugar Hill staff chose the songs for this collection, which is offered for download at $19.99.

The songs include early classics from Boone Creek (One Way Track), Sam Bush (Sailin’ Shoes), Lonesome River Band (Highway Paved With Pain), Tony Rice (Church Street Blues), Hot Rize (Colleen Malone), plus tracks from newer artists including Nickel Creek (When You Come Back Down and The Smoothie Song), The Infamous Stringdusters (Fork In The Road) and Sarah Jarosz (Song Up In Her Head).

There is a track from Ricky Skaggs’ initial traditional country album, Sweet Temptation (I’ll Take The Blame) and one from his memorable duo project with Tony Rice, Skaggs & Rice (Bury Me Beneath The Willow). Other artists featured include Dolly Parton, Ronnie Bowman, Jim Mills, Aubrey Haynie, Darrell Scott, Jerry Douglas and many more.

You can see the complete track list, hear audio samples, and buy it as a digital download in iTunes.

Wired magazine’s Epicenter blog recently ran a story about an impending time bomb written into the Copyright Act of 1976.

Their explanation of the legislation is that copyrights for sound recordings are soon going to be up for grabs.

If an artist or author sold a copyright before 1978 (Section 304), they or their heirs can take it back 56 years later. If the artist or author sold the copyright during or after 1978 (Section 203), they can terminate that grant after 35 years. Assuming all the proper paperwork gets done in time, record labels could lose sound recording copyrights they bought in 1978 starting in 2013, 1979 in 2014, and so on. For 1953-and-earlier music, grants can already be terminated.

In other words, artists will soon be able to take control of sound recordings produced before 1978. This could mean good things for artists positioned to take advantage of such a change, and it could possibly intensify the financial pressure the major labels are feeling due to declining CD sales.

I don’t see this being a huge issue for the bluegrass industry, though some important, first and second generation bluegrass music could find its copyright changing hands. Sound Recordings from artists such as Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, even New Grass Revival and The Seldom Scene, could be affected. We could potentially see the release, into the digital world, of music which the labels, for one reason or another, have chosen not to reissue.

I’m not a lawyer, and I certainly don’t understand all the ins and outs of the copyright law, but this article at Law.com contains a paragraph that seems to indicate a sticky mess could insue.

As of now, songwriters and performers — as well as producers, engineers and anyone else who helped create a song — can send a notice for songs created between 1978 and 1984.

In the end, who will own the copyright? I don’t know, but if you’re an artist it would be worth your time to speak with an entertainment lawyer concerning this issue, and what your rights may be regarding sound recordings you made in the 70’s and 80’s.

That’s the name of the newest CD release from Phil Rosenthal, former Seldom Scene lead vocalist and long-time singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. It’s a apt title, as it perfectly describes the material and the presentation. There are 17 tracks, mixing vocal and instrumental pieces,and  traditional and familiar songs, as well as Rosenthal originals, including his classic Muddy Water, originally cut by the Scene in 1973, well before Phil joined in 1977.

The track list reads like, well… a treasury of classic bluegrass and country songs.

In fact, he might have called it a Family Treasury of Bluegrass and Country Songs, as the bulk of the accompaniment is provided by kith and kin. Phil explains…

“My wife, Beth Sommers, plays bass and sings harmony with me on a lot of the songs. Our daughter, Naomi Sommers (who is a wonderful songwriter as well as singer – check out her website, www.naomisommers.com), also sings on some of the songs. Naomi started singing with me, at the age of 5, when I began recording a series of albums of bluegrass for children in 1985, just before I left the Seldom Scene – in fact, if you listen to all the albums I produced on my label, American Melody, you can basically hear Naomi grow up (she’s 31 now). Daniel Rosenthal is Beth and my son, and he plays trumpet on the album and also sings bass parts on some of the quartets. Golden Slippers, Rye Whiskey and Sail Away Ladies has all four of us singing on the choruses.

My parents, Lil and Irv Rosenthal, sing on the chorus of Some Folks Do, along with me and Naomi. My father also sang with me on some of the children’s CDs I’ve recorded over the years, and was a great singer. Sadly, he died last spring, just before the record came out.”

He also offered a nice overview of the songs he chose for this new project.

“The songs on my new CD are some of my all-time favorite bluegrass and country songs, plus some originals, including Muddy Water, a song that the Seldom Scene recorded before I was in the band, and had something to do with the band approaching me to replace John Starling when he left the group in 1977. Songwriting was part of my appeal to them, and part of the reason they asked me to audition for John’s spot. (more…)