How many steel string acoustic guitars do you think are sold each year? I don’t know either, but it must surely be in the millions.

With a large bulk of them being sold - or given - to folks without much knowledge of the workings of a flat top box, one imagines that there are millions more who own a guitar and don’t know much at all about how it works, or what should be done to keep it in top condition.

It is for just these people that the newest DVD release from AcuTab was produced, as well as for serious guitarists and guitar owners who want to know more about their cherished six strings.

Get To Know Your Acoustic Guitar featuring Marty Lanham is designed as a DVD owner’s manual for guitarists. Marty Lanham is a well-respected luthier and the owner/builder of the Nashville Guitar Co. Top Nashville guitarists in both bluegrass and country music regularly entrust him with their priceless vintage instruments for set up, repair or restoration, and many of them also use his fine, hand made guitars on stage or in the studio.

The 2 hour video takes the viewer through an overview of the various component parts of the guitar, and how they work together to create its distinctive tone.

It also covers the most crucial guitar repair issues and how you can both spot and prevent them. Fret wear, loose braces, bridge plate wear, bridge pulling up, and neck twist and warpage are among the topics covered in detail, with many close ups. Marty goes over neck relief, temperature and humidity, tuning machines, intonation, finish issues and when a guitar’s neck may need to be reset. Causes (and corrections) for high or low action are also discussed and demonstrated.

AcuTab has posted a clip on YouTube with a number of brief video samples, along with clips from their various other banjo, guitar, mandolin and fiddle DVD projects.

The new DVD is due for release on February 15, with advance orders being accepted now. Get more details (screenshots, video clips) on the AcuTab web site.

After 7 years of offering 3 day multi-instrument bluegrass seminars, Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend is calling it quits. Jointly hosted since November of 2002 by mandolin legend Herschel Sizemore and our own John Lawless, RBW has fallen prey to the many demands of John’s work with AcuTab, and Herschel’s retirement interests.

The event got its start in 1998 as an an all-banjo event, The AcuTab Banjo Seminar, which John hosted on his own. In 2000, Dan Miller, publisher of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine joined as co-host, and they added mandolin and guitar to the mix. During that period, they welcomed such esteemed artists as Sammy Shelor, Wayne Benson, David Grier and Chris Thile as instructors.

When Dan pulled out after two years, Herschel and John teamed up to continue operating the event, adding fiddle as well as bass, dobro and voice at various times since 2002. They were proud to see legends like Kenny Baker, Bobby Hicks, Roland White, Allen Shelton and Eddie Adcock as members of their faculty, plus younger “impact players” like Ron Stewart, Aubrey Haynie, Rob Ickes, Kenny Smith, Tim Stafford, Adam Steffey and Don Rigsby - just to name a few.

There is a statement from Herschel and John on the RBW web site about the event’s demise.

In all things, there comes a time to say goodbye, and so it is with our Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend. We both find our time stretched thin, and are unwilling to continue with this event absent our full attention and concentration. It has not been an easy decision, but we feel that it would be unfair to hold the weekend with so little time to dedicate to making it beneficial for the registrants.

Ultimately, it has been the students who have attended that have had the biggest impact on RBW, and we thank you all most particularly for supporting this event over the years. Your suggestions and feedback helped us to shape and modify RBW from one year to the next, and it was seeing your exhausted but beaming faces as things came to a close each year that kept us going when the time commitment seemed too severe.

Please don’t blame The Bluegrass Blog! John says that it is his other commitments and plans that have him in a time bind.

We had posted last month with news about AcuTab’s Adam Stefffey’s first-ever mandolin DVD. At the time we indicated that it would be available on June 12, but the release has been delayed until June 25.

To atone for the delay, AcuTab is offering a special offer for the first 300 orders, a free autographed Adam Steffey poster. This offer is only for direct orders through AcuTab, and they say that the posters will be shipped rolled in a tube to prevent damage in transit.

The new DVD is titled, Adam Steffey - My Approach To Bluegrass Mandolin, and includes 2 DVDs and a printed booklet. Between the two discs, the set runs for nearly four and half hours with instructional, tips and tunes from this 5 time winner of the IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year award.

The first DVD set offers purely instructional information, while the second has Adam teaching seven solos from his time as a member of Lonesome River Band, Alison Krauss & Union Station, and Mountain Heart.

From the AcuTab site:

Topics covered on Disk 1 note spacing pick attack tone and volume practicing building speed rhythm creating solos

Songs taught on Disk 2 East Tennessee Blues Cluck Old Hen Liza Jane Everytime You Say Goodbye No Place To Hide Daybreak In Dixie #6 Barn Dance

More details are available on the AcuTab web site, including several screen shots and a number of brief sample video clips, plus a larger image of the Steffey poster. Orders are being accepted now, shipping the week of June 25.

Adam Steffey’s first-ever instructional DVD for mandolin is due for release from AcuTab Publications on June 12. It will be a two-DVD set, entitled My Approach To Bluegrass Mandolin.

The first of the two disks focuses on Adam’s approach to the instrument, including his thoughts on proper technique and how to build “authentic” bluegrass-sounding mandolin solos for standard songs. He shows how he would create a simple meldoy-based solo for several popular jam session favorites, in a variety of keys.

The second disk has him teaching a number of his most-requested solos from his recordings with Alison Krauss & Union Station and Mountain Heart: Everytime You Say Goodbye, No Place To Hide, #6 Barn Dance, Cluck Old Hen, Liza Jane and several others.

There are no details up yet on the AcuTab site, but there is a link where you can request notification when they begin accepting orders.

My Approach To Bluegrass Mandolin will be available wherever bluegrass instructional DVDs are sold, on the AcuTab site, or from Adam at his live shows with Mountain Heart.

UPDATE: I uploaded a short video clip to my studio website. The clip features Adam performing Daybreak In Dixie with accompaniment from Barry Bales and Kenny Smith. Watch the clip here.

Bill Evans is surely one of bluegrass music’s most widely regarded banjo instructors, having taught hundreds of students, both privately and at camps and workshops all over the world. He has been featured in two popular instructional DVDs from AcuTab, and is the author of the upcoming Banjo For Dummies book from Wiley Publishing.

His latest AcuTab DVD, Bluegrass Banjo Master Class, is out this week, a project which Bill says formed in his mind after noticing that many of his students were encountering similar obstacles in trying to move forward on the banjo. He compiled the topics and exercises for this new DVD to help serious banjo players - at any skill level - jump start both their picking, and the enjoyment they derive from their time with the banjo.

From the AcuTab site:

Master Class is not a term you hear much in the banjo world, though it is quite common in the jazz and classical music worlds. Essentially, it is a chance to attend an instructional event with a noted master of their instrument. In this DVD, Bill Evans follows the same concept, presenting an overview of techniques that will benefit any banjo player.

Bill teaches essential bluegrass roll patterns and explores such topics as straight time vs. playing with a bounce, and how to practice with a metronome. His analysis is designed to help both new pickers get on the right track, and to refocus more experienced players on the importance of the basics – solid rhythm, big tone and bluegrass drive.

Bill also presents a series of essential bluegrass banjo licks, showing how to make slight modifications to create new licks, and a string of chordal exercises that run up and down the neck, based on familiar roll patterns.

Bluegrass Banjo Master Class runs 2 hours and 20 minutes, and includes a printed tab booklet. More details, screenshots and several sample video clips are available on the AcuTab site.

Look for it wherever quality bluegrass instructional DVDs are sold, from Bill’s web site, or directly from AcuTab.

AcuTab has announced two new bluegrass instructional DVDs for release this spring, one each for banjo and mandolin.

First up will be Bluegrass Banjo Master Class, featuring Bill Evans. This will be the fourth installment in AcuTab’s popular Power Pickin’ series, which to this point had been wholly dedicated to playing bluegrass banjo backup.

The new DVD has Bill going over a wide range of banjo techniques, focusing on the common errors and problems that he has found popping up most frequently in both private lessons and workshops. These include detailed anaysis of right and left hand positioning, pick attack and posture. He also demonstrates some of the most common licks and phrases in the Scruggs style repertoire, and how making simple changes to these licks can expand your own bag of licks, and start you on further explorations of your own.

Bluegrass Banjo Master Class will include material of interest to relatively new pickers, as well as seasoned players, and is expected in mid-to-late March. Anyone wishing to receive an email notice when the DVD is available, or when more details are posted on the AcuTab site, can request notification at acutab.com.

Serious students of the mandolin will celebrate this one - an AcuTab DVD featuring Adam Steffey, Mountain Heart’s mando monster. Adam will teach and demonstrate a number of tunes and solos he has recorded over the years, and discuss his approach to the mandolin, building solos, working in the studio and playing bluegrass mandolin accompaniment.

There is a discussion over at Mandolin Cafe where AcuTab solicited input from forum members as to which tunes and techniques they would like to see covered in the Steffey DVD. The video shoot is scheduled for February 21, so there is still time to get your suggestions and requests in. Do so by contributing at Mandolin Cafe, or by email to AcuTab.

You can also request notification by email when the Steffey DVD is ready at the AcuTab site.

No one who has attended one of Bill Evans’ banjo workshops, or studied using one of his popular AcuTab banjo DVDs, would ever accuse him of being a dummy. In addition to his prominent work in music as a teacher, performer, composer, producer and booking agent, Bill holds a Master’s Degree in Music from UC Berkeley, and has taught courses in ethnomusicology at San Francisco State University, The University of Virginia and Duke University.

Now add “author” to the list of credentials for this erudite California banjo player. Bill is spending this winter writing Banjo for Dummies for Wiley Publishing, the ubiquitous yellow and black book publishers with sales in excess of 46 million worldwide.

“The first reaction I get from banjo players or bluegrass fans is that it’s a natural! We’re used to being perceived as being real dummies by the outside world, so why not a Dummies book?”

Banjo for Dummies is Wiley Publishing’s first venture into bluegrass and acoustic music and, like most of their titles, will be available at virtually every bookstore in the country following its publication in summer of 2007. The banjo book will follow the typical Dummies format, providing a whimsical and informal introduction to the world of the banjo in 380 pages while also imparting a lot of useful information and musical instruction.

“There will not only be beginners’ sections on clawhammer and bluegrass styles, but Wiley has also asked me to present short instructional sections on minstrel banjo, classic banjo and progressive bluegrass styles. This will hopefully make the book of interest to all players, not just newcomers. It should be a very inclusive introduction to the world of the banjo.”

Bill says that Banjo for Dummies will also include a buyer’s guide, a guide to accessories, an introduction to bluegrass festivals and the famous Dummies’ “List of Tens,” which in this case will include ten important, trend setting players and ten valuable resources to become a better player. A CD will accompany the book with a separate DVD in the works.

This is just the first book that Bill will be writing for Wiley. (more…)

AcuTab Publications has released their first fiddle instructional DVD, for JD Crowe & The New South fiddler, and celebrated session player, Ron Stewart. Entitled Playing Fiddle In The Bluegrass Style, it features Ron demonstrating ten songs and tunes he has recorded in recent years.

The material covered in this 90 minute DVD include both fiddle breaks on vocal numbers and instrumental tunes. On the vocal-oriented songs, Ron demonstrates how the fiddle might play the plain, unornamented melody - as a singer might deliver it - and then how he approached it for a fiddle break.

Ron teaches several of his own original instrumentals (Twister, Blue Fiddler, Stewart’s Dream) plus his take on popular fiddle tunes like Soldier’s Joy and Whistling Rufus. A printed booklet with standard notation for each of the solos is also included with the DVD.

More details - including screen shots and sample video clips - are available on the AcuTab web site.

When AcuTab’s book of Herschel Sizemore mandolin transcriptions went out of print earlier this year, the company had no plans for a reprint. Though the book had found an appreciative audience with serious students of bluegrass mandolin, declining book sales for their tab books had led AcuTab to focus their efforts on DVD releases, one of which is a Sizemore instructional video.

When Joe Vest, who manages Gibson’s retail operation in the Opry Mills shopping center in Nashville, voiced his interest in keeping the book available in their store, plans were revisited and a reprint was ordered. AcuTab announced this week that the Sizemore transcription book is available once again.

The book contains exact transcriptions (tab and standard notation) for 30 Sizemore mandolin solos, taken from 13 tunes he has recorded on his solo projects. The songs were taken from his Back In Business and My Style CDs, and include such classics as Rebecca, Amandolina and Grey Eagle.

More details can be found on the AcuTab web site.

Barry Abernathy will be the featured guest today on The Story with Dick Gordon, aired on WUNC (North Carolina Public Radio). Barry is the banjo player with Mountain Heart, and performed previously with both Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and IIIrd Tyme Out.

You would never know it from hearing his music, but Barry had much to overcome in establishing a career as a professional musician. He was born with a deformity of his left hand, and has no fingers - only a thumb and several partial digits. Barry cultivated a fascination with the banjo at a young age, and developed a technique that was within his reach, playing over the top of the neck rather than wrapping the hand around from below. He uses his thumb and the knuckles of his partial fingers to fret the notes, modifying common fingerings and chord shapes allow him to play effective and authentic bluegrass style banjo.

There is much to admire about Barry, and succeeding against great odds is only one thing among many. His tone, command of time, meticulous execution and impeccable sense of appropriateness set him apart as a banjo player without regard to his physical challenges. On top of that, he has consistently refused to trade on his handicap, resisting the “show biz” urge to portray himself primarily in that fashion.

Even more admirably, when he does address it publicly or on stage, it is with humor and a great comfort with his situation. A running joke that involves my company, AcuTab Publications, is always a hit with audiences when he tells it on stage. Barry will mention how other prominent banjo players have had transcription books of their solos published by AcuTab, and then suggest that he has one called “AcuNub,” with every page showing a one finger bar chord diagram.

The interview with Gordon for The Story centers on Barry’s learning to play without fingers. It can be heard today, September 22, at both 1:00 and 8:00 p.m. on WUNC. The station can be heard on 91.5 in central NC, and is streamed live online.

The Story also maintains a show archive, or you can subscribe to receive their podcasts if you miss the show live.

In episode #9 of The GrassCast we bring you an interview with Sammy Shelor. Sammy stopped by the AcuTab office to share some exciting news about The Lonesome River Band with John, and we captured it as an interview. They talk about Sammy announcements concerning the band, a new Sammy Shelor instructional DVD, a solo CD, and what else is new for 2006.

This GrassCast is 16 minutes in length and the file download size is 15 MB.

Direct Download: ep9_sammy_shelor.mp3
Subscribe with:
Free Download: The GrassCast iPodder software

To subscribe with your own podcatching software, copy and past this url into the appropriate entry box in your software: http://www.thegrasscast.com/rss

UPDATE [6:36 am]: LonesomeRiverBand.com does not appear to be pointing at the new page just yet. It will still take you to the old site. The new sign up page should be live sometime today. We’ll let you know as soon as it is.

NOTE: This post is open to comments, so please share your thoughts about this episode here. Also feel free to share with us your thoughts about The GrassCast in general.

It’s a great pleasure to introduce Bill Evans as a Guest Contributor. Bill is one of my oldest friends in the bluegrass world, and I take a measure of personal pride in seeing the success he has achieved as both a performer, and an educator.

He and I were young banjo seekers together in Norfolk, VA in the mid 70’s, where we both were born and raised, and I have followed his career, and maintained a friendship since that time, ultimately featuring Bill in a number of banjo instructional DVDs with AcuTab.

Bill Evans has been involved professionally with bluegrass music and the banjo for over twenty-five years as a player, teacher, writer and historian. He occupies a unique niche in the banjo world: celebrated worldwide for his traditional and progressive bluegrass banjo styles as well as his outstanding original compositions, he also enjoys a reputation as a great teacher and workshop leader.

As if this isn”t enough, he is also an American music historian, with a master’s degree in Music from the University of California, Berkeley as well as being an expert player of 19th century minstrel and classic/parlor banjo styles. He currently performs with renowned old-time and bluegrass multi-instrumentalist Jody Stecher in a show called The Secret Life of Banjos, and will unveil his new band, the six piece Bill Evans String Summit, in early 2006.

Visit Bill online on his web site.

After more than ten years creating and publishing celebrated instructional materials for intermediate and advanced level banjo players, AcuTab Publications is releasing the first three DVDs in their new Learn To Play Bluegrass Banjo series for folks just getting started with the banjo.

From the AcuTab site:

A recurring complaint we have heard from new players is that so many beginner books or videos try to cover too much material, too rapidly for the average inexperienced student to quickly absorb. The Learn To Play Bluegrass Banjo DVDs cover smaller amounts of information, but in a much more thorough manner - with careful, detailed explanations and lots of close up views of both hands.

Your humble blog authors are intimately involved in this project, as the Lessons in this AcuTab beginner banjo series series are taught by John Lawless, and they were all filmed and edited by yours truly at Clear Blue Productions. In addition to his work as a publisher and banjo player, John has long been recognized as a premier banjo instructor, and with the release of these first three DVD lessons, new banjo players everywhere can benefit from John’s thirty plus years of banjo teaching experience.

The DVDs will be ready by late December ‘05 - not in time for Christmas delivery, but perfectly timed for those folks who will begin their study of the banjo in earnest just after the holidays. AcuTab is accepting pre-orders now, and will ship as soon as the DVDs are available, on or near December 28. They will also be available from your favorite music store or online retailer at the end of the month.

AcuTab is offering a special “package price” for anyone ordering the first three DVDs in this series together - $75 for all three, as opposed to $30 each.

Following up on the success of their first two instructional DVDs on bluegrass style backup for banjo, AcuTab has announced the release of Power Pickin’ Volume 3 - Playing Banjo Backup In A Bluegrass Band, featuring Bill Evans. This new DVD combines the up the neck backup demonstrated in Bill’s first AcuTab video with aspects of the first position backup taught in Power Pickin’ Vol 2, showing the various techniques both in isolation, and with a full bluegrass band.

And not just any pickup band, either. Bill performs 7 bluegrass standards with Herschel Sizemore on mandolin, Kenny Smith on guitar, Warren Amberson (Acoustic Endeavors) on bass/vocals and Nick Reeb (King Wilkie) on fiddle.

Get more details on Power Pickin’ Volume 3 - including some online video samples - on the AcuTab web site.

As of September 1, 2005, AcuTab will no longer function as the marketing and promotional arm of Huber Banjos, nor the sole source for ordering and customer service. This exclusive relationship which has existed since Huber Banjos launched in 2001 has served both companies well, but changes in future plans for both both AcuTab and Huber have suggested the need for Huber to bring all marketing and promotional efforts in house.

AcuTab will continue to carry Huber Banjo accessories and may resume offering Huber Banjos on a non-exclusive basis at some point in the future when Huber production is better able to keep pace with the growing demand for these fine banjos.

More details about this changeover can be found on the AcuTab web site.