This report comes from Casey Henry, a banjo player and writer living in Nashville, TN. She performed the past few years with her brother, Chris, in The Two Stringers, now disbanded.

Next Great American Band on Friday night held the first big surprise of the show. Franklin Bridge, the band that judge Sheila E. had predicted would win the contest, got voted off. The judges were shocked; I was shocked. But in my heart of hearts I was glad because it meant that both Cliff Wagner and the Old #7 and the Clark Brothers made it through to play another night.

Cliff chose the Lieber and Stoller song Poison Ivy to sing and adapted it very well. Cliff was back on the banjo, though there was no banjo break in the song. He looked quite dapper in a suit with an ascot. In the pre-song clip about the group we learned that Cliff does everything from booking to promotion to writing the songs for the band. If the band was a kingdom, one of the guys said, "Cliff would be the emperor."

The Clark Brothers chose Lieber and Stoller’s Saved, and delivered an absolutely amazing performance. Ashley sang the fire out of it with a truly passionate lead vocal; Austin wailed on the dobro, and Adam pounded out the rhythm on the guitar. The judges were practically beside themselves with praise. John Rzeznik said, "I’m questioning everything now‚Ķ" meaning, I believe, that before he thought a drummer necessary to a rockin’ performance. Shelia deemed it "Magnifico," and the dour Dicko said, "Even a wretch like me feels closer to salvation" after hearing that song.

Next week bands tackle a Rolling Stones cover. As I said last time, the competition is truly fierce now and it all depends on the stamina of Appalachian-America’s thumbs (dialing those phones) to determine if our bands make it through another round.

Unfortunately last week’s performances are not up on the show’s site, but you can still see songs from weeks 1, 2, and 3.

This report comes from Casey Henry, a banjo player and writer living in Nashville, TN. She performed the past few years with her brother, Chris, in The Two Stringers, now disbanded.

They made it! Both Cliff Wagner and the Old #7 and The Clark Brothers got enough votes to keep them on Next Great American Band for another week. Friday’s show was only an hour long, so the eight remaining bands each played one song from the catalog of Billy Joel.

Cliff Wagner and the Old #7 chose You May Be Right from "the old Kentucky fox hunter Billy Joel" and gave it a laid-back country shuffle treatment, with Cliff trading the banjo for a guitar. Two judges loved in, but Dicko, reliably cantankerous, deemed it a "soporific, sleepy" arrangement.

The Clark Brothers played seventh (a little nail-biting going on by that time) and did a slow beautiful rendition of She’s Got A Way, with Ashley on fiddle, Adam on guitar, and Austin, as usual, on dobro. All three judges proclaimed their song the best of the night.

Now the stiff competition begins as all the bands left are quite good, have excellent musicianship and vocals, and are improving all the time. Next week bands tackle the songs of early rock & roll writing team Lieber and Stoller. Be sure to tune in Friday the 16th and phone in those votes!

You can watch previous weeks’ performances on the NGAB site.

If your Friday evening plans will find you in front of a television screen, perhaps you will want to tune in to tonight’s edition of The Next Great American Band on Fox.

Casey Henry has been keeping us up-to-date as this American Idol spin-off competition rolls along, as two of the eight remaining contestants are bluegrass or grassy acts. If you want to see The Clark Brothers and Cliff Wagner and the Old #7 move on to next week, be sure to tune in and vote!

Tonight’s show airs at 8:00 p.m. (EST), and the bands will each perform an original song, and a Billy Joel cover.

Go bluegrass!

This report comes from Casey Henry, a banjo player and writer living in Nashville, TN. She performed the past few years with her brother, Chris, in The Two Stringers, now disbanded.

I’m happy to report that both bluegrass representatives made it to round three of Next Great American Band. But the show couldn’t have unfolded more suspensefully. All twelve of last week’s bands were gathered together, then called up to play one at a time, so the two left at the end were the ones who didn’t make it. The bands each played one original and one cover by the songwriting team of Elton John/Bernie Taupin.

The Clark Brothers played fourth, long before the nail-biting suspense set in. Their original, Country Time, had a very catchy hook and a cute story about living in a little country town. Their John/Taupin song was Country Comfort, a slower ballad that gave them a chance to play prettily, not just all-out, nail-it-to-the-wall fast. The judges had nothing but positive comments for the boys.

Cliff Wagner and the Old #7 played seventh (appropriate…). They good naturedly dedicated their original to "Britney Spears and her first husband." It was titled Little White Chapel on the Strip. Their cover was called Honky Cat and for it the guitar player switched to dobro, leaving them guitar-less. But they pulled off the unorthodox instrumentation with ease and the judges unanimously proclaimed them "The funnest band in the whole competition."

Once again it is up to the American public to decide who moves forward after Friday night’s show. The votes have been cast but we won’t find out ‚Äòtil next week. In the meantime the bands will be working on a Billy Joel cover. And you can now watch bands’ week 2 performances online on the NGAB site.

Watching the show has been great fun, but has raised some questions. Like, do they get to choose their cover songs or are they assigned? Did they really have to sit through each band’s performance before the next band was called up? Because that would have taken a ridiculously long time.

And why did Cliff not get a better pickup system for his banjo? The way his pickup sounds is the reason most players hate pickups on banjos. But it’s possible for a pickup to sound decent. Bela Fleck and Alison Brown do it all the time. I don’t know who could answer these questions except for the people involved in the show, but inquiring minds want to know.

And why is there no official mention of the band involvement in the NGAB show on either Cliff’s webpage or his MySpace site?

Oh, wait. Being the bluegrass player that he is he probably handles his website himself and he’s been kinda busy the last three weeks‚Ķ