Your blog authors have been busy in the studio all week working on a couple of new AcuTab projects that were mentioned earlier. I managed to snap a couple of photos of the action.

I thought I’d share them here for those that are interested.

The sessions have gone well and we’re excited about the results.

AcuTab Publications has news of several new bluegrass instructional DVDs due during the summer and fall of 2008.

Just completed shooting is a fiddle project with Mountain Heart’s Jim Van Cleve which will go into editing shortly. Jim covered a number of his own compositions (#6 Barn Dance, Nature Of The Beast, Devil’s Courthouse) plus spent considerable time describing how to add rhythmically in a band setting, and how to find solos and backup in different keys.

Due to be shot next week is a banjo DVD featuring Ron Block and a mandolin video with Sierra Hull. Both will focus on these two stellar players and their individual styles. More details about these should be forthcoming soon.

A JD Crowe banjo DVD is also scheduled to be shot later this year.

If you would like to be notified by email when these new titles are released, you can make that request on the AcuTab site.

AcuTab is also pleased to note the reissue of two popular titles that have been unavailable for some time. JD Crowe – AcuTab transcriptions includes banjo tablature for all the songs on two classic albums by JD Crowe & The New South, and Kenny Smith – Tunes and Techniques offers 3 hours with this flatpicking master on two DVDs.

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.

It’s not meant to teach you to become a luthier, but to educate and inform while providing insight about the care and repair of your steel string pals.

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.