Well, I’m heading out this morning for about two weeks in Poland. I don’t expect to have much in the way of Internet access, nor much of a chance to keep tabs on the bluegrass news, so I’ll have to leave you guys in John’s capable hands. I know that he has his plate full right now, so please be patient if posts on The Bluegrass Blog are a bit lighter than usual, or appear a little later in the day while I’m away.

My wife, Lauren, and I will be escorting the youth group from our church to Lwowek Slaski in Poland for a mission trip, and should be back on August 3.

If I see or hear any bluegrass while I’m there, I’ll fill you all in upon my return.

John adds: We’ll see how capable my hands may be when I try to convert and post this afternoon’s GrassCast. I have the training, but not the experience. This is clearly Brance’s milieu.

Some of you may have noticed some strange behavior from the site yesterday afternoon. Recently as our readership has gone up we have experienced server overloads at an increasing rate. In an effort to prevent this from occurring in the future, I was in mucking around with the code yesterday trying to make some improvements.

For those that want to know, I moved the ads to their own server. Previously they were hosted on the same account with the blog. I’ve now got them set up on a separate account of their own. Since they are being served remotely now, you may notice that things load a little differently. I’ll be doing some more upgrades and performance modifications in the coming week or two. So hold on to your hats!

In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Just a quick reminder to our readers who enjoy listening to The GrassCast, our weekly audio podcast, that you can use Apple’s popular iTunes software to subscribe to the podcast. The use of the word subscribe may confuse some folks, as it suggests the likelihood of a fee - but there is no charge to subscribe to The GrassCast, and doing so could save you some time and trouble.

What subscribing means in this context is that you elect to have our weekly podcast monitored by the iTunes software, and each time you open iTunes while connected to the Internet, it will check to see if any editions of The GrassCast are available, and not yet downloaded. If so, it will download them into iTunes in the background, ready for you to listen when it is convenient for you. You will find them in the iTunes podcast directory.

If you also use an Apple iPod, you can identify The GrassCast to be updated when you connect your iPod to your computer, meaning that you won’t need to check for new editions of the podcast. If you enjoy our interviews each week, use iTunes and the iPod to make sure that each new edition of The GrassCast is there waiting for you when it is released.

Find our podcast subscribe info here.

Your dutiful authors of The Bluegrass Blog will be in attendance at the Pickin’ At The Paramount show in Bristol, TN on Sunday, January 15. We will be recording interviews for future editions of The GrassCast, our weekly audio podcast, and possibly getting some photographs for The Bluegrass Blog as well.

We posted about the show when it was announced in late November ‘05, which will be an all-star concert featuring a stellar line up of bluegrass music artists. Familiar names like Ronnie Bowman, Jim Mills, Tim Stafford, Larry Cordle, Rob Ickes, Don Rigsby, Marshall Wilborn and another dozen or so great pickers and singers will be featured in a round robin, “band scramble” sort of concert. The personnel on stage will change from song to song, making for a unique opportunity to see so many of your favorite artists in a single show.

There will be two shows on 1/15, at 3:00 and 7:30 p.m., and ticket info can be found on the Pickin’ At The Paramount web site. If you make it to the show, be sure to find Brance or myself and say howdy!

On behalf of Brance and myself, The Bluegrass Blog wishes a safe, joyous and very Merry Christmas to all of our readers, advertisers and friends all over the world! We hope you find time to recall the value of family and faith, and have a chance to renew your acquaintance with both.

We have two Christmas remembrances to share today from Guest Contributors, and then it’s back to bluegrass on Monday.

Just a quick note to remind our readers that new content will continue to appear each day on The Bluegrass Blog through the Christmas weekend. If you have gotten into the habit of checking the site each day, we hope that you will continue to do so while you enjoy some time away from work in celebration of this joyous holiday.

There will be new posts with the same sort of bluegrass music news to which you have become accustomed on this site, but we also have some very special pieces scheduled, written by guest contributors. We think that you will find their posts to be both informative and entertaining, and look forward to reading any feedback you may choose to offer on the site this next week or so.

New content will be posted each day over New Year’s weekend as well.

As we in the United States celebrate a day of Thanksgiving for all the great benefits we enjoy, it seems fitting that your editors of The Bluegrass Blog offer a word of thanks for the many fine folks who read our posts each day, as well as the advertisers whose support allows us to exist, and the various correspondents and contributors who pass information along to us.

Thanks you guys!!

We are encouraged by the depth of interest and support we have received since we launched this site in August, and are deeply appreciative of all the kind words - and bits of critique - we have received. Comments from readers are always welcome, and can be sent via our Contact Form.

We received a number of comments from site visitors this past few weeks, especially during and just after our coverage of the IBMA convention in Nashville. From time to time, we will publish them for everyone to read. You are always welcome to pass along comments via our Contact Form.

Here is a comment that came in from Larry Gorley:

I just want to thank you for the service that you are providing. In the last few weeks since John told me about this site. I have found myself visiting it on average about three times a day. As someone involved in the music both as a bluegrass radio programmer and promoter. I need to stay in the know as to what is going on in the music scene.

I feel that the site helps me to do this. I do not hesitate in recommending it to others. So please keep on with what you are doing and I’ll keep on telling folks about you. As I told someone the other day this was the first time that I didn’t have to rely on the Associated Press to tell me the next day who the winners were at the bluegrass awards.

Here’s another, from Steve Breen:

John and Brance: As a consumer (and an Acutab customer to boot) I really enjoyed the blog this week. Keep up the good work.

(more…)

I just added a few images to the header rotation. These are some photos I took at IBMA in Nashville.

The two close up photos of a dobro were taken at the Beard Guitars booth. I’d been looking for a dobro to photograph for a while now. They were situated right across the aisle from the booth The Bluegrass Blog shared with AcuTab, so I stopped by and asked permission to snap a few pics. They were kind enough to let me. Thanks guys!

There are now 17 images in the header rotation. The script that chooses an image is completely random, which means it can, and will, select the same image twice in a row. So you may have to load the page a number of times before you see the new images.

Previous:

For those that are curious…

Brance and I are packing it up and hitting the road for IBMA week in Nashville. We will be covering the many events of this busy World Of Bluegrass week with a flurry of blog posts, daily photo galleries and audio podcasts. Folks who can not attend should be able to capture something of the flavor of this event, and savor something of its debut in Music City.

We also hope that anyone who will be attending will keep an eye on The Bluegrass Blog all week. We have a searchable, printable schedule of all IBMA week events - including off site functions - and we will be posting updates and changes to the schedule as they are announced.

The biggest news will be the live blog coverage of the Awards Show Thursday night. We will be set up in the Ryman Auditorium, posting the results of each award as it is given. Just come to The Bluegrass Blog at 7:30 p.m. (Central) on Thursday, October 27, and refresh your browser screen every few minutes to see the results.

We’ll also be having some fun comparing the actual awards to the results of our Bluegrass Blog Awards Poll, where you can cast your own vote in a poll that mirrors the official IBMA ballot.

Next stop Nashville!

Your dutiful Bluegrass Blog authors will be leaving on Sunday (10/23) for the IBMA World Of Bluegrass Convention and Fan Fest in Nashville, TN. Blog posts may be down a bit between now and then as pre-IBMA preparations swing into high gear, but expect a flurry of them once we settle in Nashville for the week.

We will be covering the many events that occur during IBMA week, including the performance showcases (official and unofficial), the bustling vendor and exhibit area, the IBMA seminars and meetings, and the late night activities. We will present photo galleries each day (perhaps more than once daily) with images from various World Of Bluegrass functions, and will post frequently with vignettes and breaking news as quickly as our situation allows.

We will also maintain a database with a comprehensive listing of the many events occurring during IBMA week, searchable by date or artist. This event listing should be available on The Bluegrass Blog in the next day or so but may not be fully populated until very close to the start of the event itself.

If you, your band, your organization or your company will be sponsoring any activities that week, please be sure to contact us with that information. We will be including special events that occur during the exhibit hours as well, so don’t forget to let us know about them as well.

Perhaps the one thing we will do that week that will be of the greatest interest to folks unable to attend will be our live blogging of the IBMA Awards Show on Thursday, October 27. We will be blogging on site that evening and posting notice of the winners in each category as soon as the award is presented.

Find more details about the live blog here.

I added some new photos to the header of the website yesterday. They rotate randomly every time the page is loaded. The photos that are now in the rotation were all taken here at my studio, either by myself or my good friend Dave Carney. Here’s some info about the instruments that are now included in the rotation.

• Collings D2H - owned by myself
• Huber Lancaster - owned by John Lawless
• Triggs Mandolin - owned by Dan Miller
• fiddle - owned by Ron Stewart

Now I just need to find a dobro and bass to photograph!