It has now been fixed and emails are sending as they should be.

Many apologies to those who have attempted to email posts in the last week.

Keep an eye out for continued improvements, and let us know of any other glitches you may find.

50 Years: Where Do You Come From? Where Do You Go? was released August 25 by Smithsonian Folkways. The 3 CD box set contains a total of 81 tracks (6 previously unreleased) and an 88 page booklet with notes on each track. Extensive biographical details are provided for each of the three eras of the band, as described in the booklet: 1958-1962, 1963-1973, and The New Lost City Ramblers at 50.

The CDs include the band’s choices from their long recording career (1958-1973), plus field recordings of some of the musicians who had a strong influence on their sound.

Audio samples from all of the tracks can be found on the Smithsonian Folkways web site, where you can also purchase individual tracks for download. There are three free tracks there as well, which can be downloaded as either .MP3 or.FLAC files.

Wikio is a blog and news aggregator, and a search engine for blogs developed in France in 2006. It is available online in French, Italian, Spanish, German and English.

Their rankings are automated, dynamic lists generated based on links to individual blogs within news articles and RSS feeds.

Thanks to all our readers – and those other blogs and news services who link to us – for helping us make the top 100!

Big Al is indeed taking over the fiddle spot from Brandon Godman, but only on an interim basis until a new full-time fiddler is hired. He is still working for the US Postal Service and is unable to handle Doyle’s heavy touring schedule.

Doyle is auditioning fiddlers now, and we’ll report back when a new one is announced.

Brance and I would like to extend a special word of thanks to all our readers – we appreciate the time you spend here, and are delighted that you find our content worthy of your attention.

Looking over our visitor stats, we see that we have doubled our readership over the past year (8/06-07).

While we’re on the subject of stats, let’s talk about some of the confusion that surrounds this question. You may find web sites – even some in acoustic music markets – who make what seem like unbelievable claims for daily visitors.

The problem isn’t with web stats generically, but with how they are collected. When we first started The Bluegrass Blog, we relied on what are known as server stats, which measure the number of times files are requested for display from our web server. We thought we were setting the web on fire, until we realized that each page on the site involves dozens of file requests, and that the only way we could get accurate stats was to measure image loads.

Image load stats record how many times a specific image is loaded from an external server (other than ours), and gives a very accurate measurement of how many times actual readers have loaded a page. We use three different image load stat tracking services, and they all report very similar numbers. These stats also allow us to ignore the hundreds (or thousands) of file requests that are made daily by indexing robots such as Google.

As an example of what we mean, if we look at our server stats for August 29 of this year, they show 17,000 unique visitors and 129,000 page views, while the image load stats show 2348 and 4831 respectively. Oh that they were true!

This final image represents where our readers are located geographically, based on the last 2500 visitors on Friday (8/31). No real surprises here, but it is nice to know that bluegrass music has become a truly international medium.

This morning was just a short stroll down memory lane for me and I thought I would share it with you. Thanks for reading all this time, and for telling others about us. We look forward to another year of bringing you the News at the speed of bluegrass!

After Megan posted some strong feelings about trading live shows in her Guest Contribution on Wednesday (not in favor), we heard from readers who wanted to chime in, and were frustrated by the fact that, unlike many other blogs, we do not allow for comments. Brad Harper wrote in to share the fact that he had used his own blog to comment on her post (in favor of file trading), and agreed to allow us to re-publish his thoughts as a second Guest Contribution.

We continue to welcome Guest Contributions, both from folks working in the bluegrass/acoustic music industry, and from fans and amateur/semi-pro pickers who have something they want to share with our readers. Cogency, timeliness and the appropriateness of the subject matter will be crucial to them being accepted for publication, and prospective contributors are invited to contact us if they have an interest in composing a brief essay for publication.

We have generally eschewed comments for individual posts for several reasons. Initially, we wanted to avoid the sort of “Shut up!” and “What an idiot!!” responses that are too often a big part of blog commenting. We did try comments on certain posts where we felt like it would be appropriate, but required that commenters be registered as users on our site, use their actual names in any comments they wish to make, and that they be moderated by The Bluegrass Blog before they appeared on the site.

As it transpired, not many of our readers felt the compulsion to post comments, perhaps because of those restrictions, so we have gradually discontinued enabling them. In response to some reader requests, however, both of the posts referenced above have now been enabled to allow for reader comments, and anyone who wishes to chime in is welcome to do so, as long as you are willing to abide by our comment policies.

All comments are moderated and must be approved before publication, and anonymous comments will not be allowed. We want to foster conversation via opinion posts, but insist that it be open, civil and clearly credited.

In the past few months, we have also discovered that a pernicious spambot was able to penetrate our registration filter and post some plainly vile pornographic links as comments. Of course, since the comments require moderation, none of them get through to your eyes, but it both further soured us on comments, and got us thinking in a new direction where reader participation is concerned.

We are currently developing a major upgrade to The Bluegrass Blog that will allow our readers to be more active in discussions of posts we publish here. Look for more news about The B in the next few weeks.

Follow-up, 10:15 a.m.: Commenting has been enabled for this post as well, should anyone wish to add a thought.

Berrier is a very valuable part of our regional music media, as he is both a fiddler and a serious student of old time music who brings a level of genuine expertise to his coverage of traditional music in our area. We have linked to Ralph’s pieces in the past, most particularly his in-depth series of articles about the efforts of the state of Virginia to establish and promote The Heritage Music Trail, a series of traditional music attractions in SW VA, as a tourist destination for folks interested in the music, and Appalachian culture.

His story in today’s paper marks the upcoming one year anniversary of The Bluegrass Blog, and is drawn from my recent conversation with Ralph about how the site came to be, and what we have in mind for the future.

You can read the full article on The Roanoke Times web site. There is a small glitch in the article online, where several paragraphs of text are repeated at the end of the piece, but that shouldn’t provide much of a distraction for those interested in reading it.

He mentioned at one point in the article, my thoughts on the international nature of our readership, and how the internet has helped fuel continued growth in interest for all things bluegrass online. We watch those stats (country of origin) with great interest, and they never fail to provide encouragement about the expansion of our music worldwide.

As you may expect, the largest percentage of our readers come from the US, east of the Mississippi, with another large percentage in Europe. What has been interesting is the number we find in Asia. Japan and Australia are not a surprise, as their interest in bluegrass music is well-documented, but we are delighted to consistently see readers in Viet Nam, Thailand, Philippines, Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong and even mainland China. We have regular readers in India, and several in northern Africa and Ethiopia.

Of particular interest of late has been our readership in the Middle East. Just today, we have had visits from cyber surfers in Qatar, Kuwait, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Iran. About ten days ago, as open warfare was breaking out, we found simultaneous visitors online in Tel Aviv and Beirut.

Perhaps Del McCoury could be dispatched as a roving ambassador?

I will post some news while I’m away, but will not be as visible here as is my norm. Brance will make sure that you stay up to date on all the news in the bluegrass world, and I’ll look forward to resuming my regular blogging duties next weekend.

Should anyone try and reach me by email, please accept my apology in advance if I don’t respond right away. I will have some access to email while I am away, but I am told that I must behave as though I am on vacation – at least most of the time.

Sirius subscribers can simply tune in on Channel 65, as can anyone with Dish Network Satellite TV where it will run on channel 6065. If you are a subscriber but won’t be in the car – or near your Sirius receiver – you can listen online. A free 3-day trial subscription is also available for online listening.

John and Ned’s segment will run in the 7:00 p.m. hour (EST) on Sunday, March 12.

Hard news is slow during the holidays when everyone in bluegrass hopes to spend time with those that matter most in their lives, and performers and bluegrass business people alike are on vacation, just as we all are. We will continue to publish such news as does surface between now and the end of the year, but much of what we post is likely to be less specifically “newsy,” and more of general interest to anyone who enjoys bluegrass – or just plain fun!

It is possible that we will offer more opinion pieces during this time as well, many of which may be opened for general comments. We hope that you enjoy what we have in store for the next few weeks, and as always, invite your feedback, pro or con.

Brance and I send along our kindest regards for your support of The Bluegrass Blog, along with our sincere wishes for a joyous and Merry Christmas!

Here’s how it will work. I’ll be introducing them to you in the next few days. Some will be familiar names, some won’t. But John and I feel that each of these individuals has something to offer of interest to our community. There will be a new category for Guest Contributors. This category will contain all posts by or about our Guest Contributors. There will also be sub-categories for each Contributor. If they contribute multiple posts over time, all of their posts will be found in their category. You will find all these categories in the pull down menu at the top of the page, and also in the sidebar to the left.

We hope you enjoy this new addition to The Bluegrass Blog.

Guest Contributors will not necessarily write posts on any kind of regular schedule, though that may develop over time. For now their contributions will be occasional as seems appropriate.

We are very excited about this new addition to The Bluegrass Blog and hope you are as well.

You can select the categories from the pull down menu at the top of each page, in the sidebar along the left side of each page, or get more details on the categories with direct links to each here.

Because of the length of these features, only a brief synopsis of the content will display on the font page, along with this longform graphic and a link to display the entire article. In some cases, photos will accompany the longform piece and we may open them to comments if the content suggests it.

Like our sporadic audio podcasts, longform posts will be published as the opportunity arises, and not on any specific schedule or frequency.

For instance, if you host a bluegrass radio show, you might choose to visit The Bluegrass Blog as you prepare for your program, scanning the category with information on new CD releases, taking a look at the band news, and the bluegrass radio news before going on the air or recording your show for a later broadcast.

If you are someone learning to play bluegrass, you might want to keep a close eye on the instructional materials or online resources categories.

You can see the list of categories by clicking on the pull down menu just under the header image, or on the Categories link in the Navigation panel in the top left corner of each page. They are also listed in the left hand side bar part of the way down the page. All of these listings are active links that will take you to the posts in that category.

For more general information, you can view all of our categories and descriptions here.

We will surely pass along our own news as well. The release of a Ron Stewart fiddle DVD or the recording of a new CD by Larry Keel are both newsworthy items, and the fact that they involve this blog’s authors does not diminish that fact. Expect to see notices about them both when the time is right.

Expect also to see information about similar items that are provided to us by anyone else in businesses similar to ours. We encourage anyone who markets to the bluegrass community to make us aware of any news about their company or their products that may be of interest to our readers. We can’t promise that we will publish an article about every single notice we receive, but we request that anyone who feels that something has been unfairly excluded please let us know your thoughts.

We can be contacted via this online contact form.

Bottom Line: we will publish news and information which we feel will be of interest to the bluegrass community, whether it comes from this blog’s authors or friends, from a company who advertises with us or not, or from people known or unknown to us.

Our podcast feed is available here.
We recommend the use of ipodder for subscribing to the podcast.
If you use Apple Computer’s iTunes application, you can subscribe to our podcast here.
Both are crossplatform and support automated downloads.

Podcasting explaned

“Podcasting” is the current buzz word among internet junkies. Simply put, podcasting is making audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online in a way that allows software to automatically download the files for listening at the user’s convenience. The word “podcasting” comes from combining the word “iPod” with the word “broadcasting”. This is somewhat deceiving as an iPod is not required to listen to a podcast. Designed to work with internet audio downloads, it is the most popular portable digital audio player available today, making the use of it’s name in reference to a downloadable mp3 stream very natural.

Podcasting is a method of publishing audio broadcasts via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely due to automatic downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers.
Podcasting is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model, which uses a feed (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver an enclosed file. Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated “radio shows,” and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using “podcatching” software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically. Some podcatching software is also able to synchronise (copy) podcasts to portable music players. Any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts.

The above quote is from the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

• What is a blog
• …and why does it matter to bluegrass
• That’s great, but why does this matter to me?
• How will The Bluegrass Blog generate visitors?
• How can you contribute?
• Who are we
• Viewpoint – a recurring feature