One of the things that IBMA promotes heavily is education—the music, and about the music business. To that end they have a wide variety of seminars throughout the week on topics ranging from the technical side of the music (”New Developments in Live Sound Technology”), to personal well-being (”Weight Management and Diabetes Prevention on the Bluegrass Road”); from internet marketing and social networking to how to negotiate a contract. This year they have the largest variety of truly useful topics that they’ve had yet. I’ve been to several and each has been wonderfully informative.

For Monday’s “Teaching Bluegrass: An Alternative Revenue Stream” moderators Ned Luberecki and Megan Lynch were joined by panelists Terry Baucom, Stephen Mougin, and myself. Many players rely on teaching to get them through the slim winter months when the gigs are few and far between. We covered many different avenues of instruction including private lessons, group lessons, workshops, camps, DVDs and books, and internet lessons. The last is a recent development and not many people are offering this option yet. Strangely (to us anyway) Mike Compton has been on the leading edge of this technology and has been doing internet lessons for quite a while. Anyone interested in pursuing that avenue, either as a teacher or as a student, should consult his FAQ page.

Tuesday’s “Writing for the Internet: Blogging and Building an Audience” was hosted by our own John Lawless. Panelists included Ashby Frank, sometime contributor to this publication who blogs on his own website; Ted Lehmann of Ted Lehmann’s Bluegrass, Books and Brainstorms blog, and Craig Shelburne who contributes to and edits the blog over at CMT.com. Despite what it looks like in the picture, the discussion was lively and extended. The crux of the discussion was that blogging should be entertaining to the audience, who you hope will come back to your site on a regular basis. Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites are good tools to use to drive people to your site where, hopefully, they’ll buy your CD, or look at your schedule and come out to a show. It’s all about staying connected to people and letting them get to know you through your writing.

They talked a little bit about the technical side of blogging—using programs  such as WordPress, or Blogger—but mostly about the power of changing content to get people to visit your site every day or every week. The Bluegrass Blog is the best at this. I don’t know about you but even when I’m not writing for the Blog I read it every day and it is my main source of bluegrass news.

The conclusion to Ashby Frank’s tale of road woe is told on his web site.

When we left off, Special C was broken down on the side of the road in Kansas, with barely enough time to make it to their next show in Wyoming.

Ashby picks up from there…

“After Justin and I spent a night surfing the net and waiting on the phone for rental car and flight rates, Justin finally devised on a plan to get us out of WaKeeney.

We had to rent a one way vehicle from Hays (30 miles away) in the morning, drive to Denver, rent another van (because there were no vans or one-way rentals available in Hays), then try to make it to Buffalo (7 hours away) by our new 8 o’clock set time. I had no idea that one way car rentals were so expensive!

The repair shop owner in WaKeeney happened to know a guy that would be driving to Hays early in the morning, and could drop Justin off at Hertz. What a nice town!

So it is all planned. But wait‚Ķ Once Justin got to the rental place, he was told that they were out of cars for the day even though we had a reservation.”

Sounds like a Seinfeld episode. Read the conclusion of the story at ashbyfrank.com.

But Special Consensus wasn’t the only bluegrass band suffering a major breakdown over the weekend. NewFound Road’s trusty ride went down Saturday on the way home from the Raccoon Creek Bluegrass Festival in Dallas, GA.

It had taken them from Knoxville to Dallas just fine on Saturday morning, but left them high and dry just a few miles up the road in Cartersville. The rest of the band made it to nearby Atlanta and home from there, but Tim Shelton is stuck in Georgia waiting for a tow this morning.

To make his weekend complete, he is also enjoying the fact that his cell phone has gone missing.

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Make sure to give Tim a big hug next time you see him.

Ashby Frank has a sad story on his blog at ashbyfrank.com…

It tells of how the first leg of a midwestern tour with Special Consensus turned into a roadside disaster yesterday (7/9). Their trusty vehicle let them down, and left them stranded far from where they needed to be.

Well this is the beginning  (Day 2) of one of the famous, long, multi-state Special C tours and it’s gotten off to an interesting start. This one’s 17 days with stops in Buffalo and Casper, WY, Windsor, CO, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois.

We  left Nashville kinda late. I drove to Paducah, Justin drove a good ways through Illinois, and then I took back the wheel a few hours later. A short time after I started driving, I noticed Justin was messing around in the back and didn’t think much of it until I realized that for the first time ever, I could see head lights in the rear view mirror. UH HO! The back door had come open and Justin was standing back there trying to rescue my suitcase from falling out into Saint Louis traffic while screaming for me to stop. It’s soooo loud in the SpecialCmobile that I hadn’t heard his first scream. I didn’t freak out, realizing that if I hit the brakes all of our stuff and Justin would go flying out the back door onto I-70. We got pulled over, locked the door, and and made it to Columbia, MO at 1 AM. I saved Justin’s life, and he saved my suitcase and probably my mandolin and computer bag‚Ķ so he saved mine too.

After tons of talking and Google-ing we finally found a place to stay. This morning we got up and hit the breakfast buffet at the Comfort Inn (where the main course was “pancake wraps”, AKA Corn Dogs), then headed out through Kansas City and on through Kansas‚Ķ or at least a part of the way. I stopped my shift in a town called WaKeeney. There was a Sinclair station and we were running low on Diesel and not within 30 miles of another town, so that made sense to me.

David started his first shift of driving for the trip after we fueled up, and he made it three miles. THREE MILES. Then squeek, bang, bang, smoke! We stopped right there on I-70, and called AAA. The “Turtle Top” made a horrible noise when we shifted it into park, and then we waited for an hour and a half or so in the 100 degree heat. A VERY friendly and helpful Kansas State Trooper came and parked by us and got us in contact with a heavy duty tow truck driver that happened to have a shop right there (here) in WaKeeney (Pop. 1924).

Once the truck got here to pull us away, they figured out that we have broken bearings and a broken rear axle. So we got pulled back to WaKeeney, said goodbye to the friendly Trooper, and hello to Steve the super friendly Repair Shop Owner. He tells us that it’ll be a week, maybe two, two get all this stuff fixed‚Ķ oh and by the way‚Ķ. we’re supposed to be in Buffalo, Wyoming, (11 hours from here) for a 2PM set tomorrow.

Will Special C make it to their show on time? Will they be able to find transportation out of WaKeeney?

Follow Ashby’s blog for all the news.

Special Consensus mandolinist Ashby Frank has agreed to send us updates and photos from their current tour of Britain and Ireland. Ashby is unsure how much web access he will have during the tour, but promises to send his musings whenever he has the chance.

After 23 days, 21 shows, and hours and hours in mini-vans, city buses, ferries, and planes, I’m back home! We had a great time with everyone over in Ireland, Scotland, and England, but it’s nice to be back. I must admit it felt strange to be on the RIGHT side of the road again.

Our last few gigs went very well, mostly sold out, but we did get blasted by one of the largest snow storms to hit Ireland and Britain in the last 20 years. It didn’t keep many people away, though.

The last two nights we spent in the town of Kilworth, which is in County Cork in the far South of the Republic of Ireland. I guess it’s a good indicator for us that we were sold out of the new CD Signs long before we made it down to Kilworth,  and on the last night we sold completely out of everything the band brought. I guess some people, and we all know who you are, just can’t enough Bluegrass.

Yesterday was kind of crazy because we had to get up at 4:45 AM (10:45 PM Nashville Time) to drive back to Dublin to catch our flight. Talk about a long day! It was nice to get back to Nashville before too late. By the end of the trip we had been in transit for something like 16 hours. That’s a long day.

Now that I’m home, I have a chance to wind down a little and catch up on shredding the considerable pile of junk mail that had accumulated. It’s ridiculous!

I must say that I’m overwhelmed by the response and interest that everyone has shown in this series of posts! Special thanks to the TheBluegrassBlog.com for setting all of this up! If for some strange reason you’re interested in reading more about me or my travels, even after all of this you’ve already read, come on back to AshbyFrank.com and see what I’m up to!