CMT News ran in interesting story yesterday concerning the relationship between fuel costs, festival attendance, and CD sales. The story’s primary focus is the affect on artists’ bottom line produced by increasing fuel costs. The story is primarily based on an interview conducted with Keith Case, but also includes quotes from Ricky Skaggs and Sharon McGraw, managing editor of Bluegrass Unlimited.

Case sees the situation from the perspective of a booking agent trying to book, schedule, and route shows for bluegrass artists. He talked about the increased price of fuel for tour busses, the increased cost of airfare and the decreased availability of flights, and the increased cost of rental vehicles.

Case relates the story of a recent short, three show tour, for Ralph Stanley.

He went from home [in southwest Virginia], played three dates that were all closely routed in Texas. He came back and his [roundtrip] fuel bill was almost $2,000.

Since these dates were all booked a year or more ago, the artists are really feeling the financial crunch from these fuel costs. My own conversations with artists indicate that many acts are unable to increase their asking price for a festival date because the promoters are simply unwilling to invest more in artist fees for next year while uncertain what attendance will look like a year from now.

Case ties a decline in CD sales to the increase fuel costs as well. Indicating that it not only costs the band more to get to the show, it also costs the fans more. Having spent much of their available cash on gas, the fans are buying less once they reach the festival.

…people are spending so much to go to festivals, as far as fuel costs go, that they are not spending as much at the festivals.

Interestingly, the author of the article then converses with a tour buss rental company manager concerning attendance at a couple of country music festivals. He then returns to bluegrass with Skaggs and Sharon McGraw.

Sharon shared that her research indicates no noticeable decline in bluegrass festival attendance, this year.

I think people have been a little more selective in how far they’ve gone [to attend festivals]. But attendance-wise, from what I’ve seen, it seems to be steady.

I think next year is when it’s all going to trickle down, when artists will say, ‘Well, we were just going to bite the bullet. Now we’ve bitten it, and it’s biting us.’ That may be where some of it comes apart.

We’ve run two polls this year, one at the beginning of the festival season, and one just recently, asking our readers if increased fuel costs would have an affect on their festival attendance this year. The results show 60% of readers indicating they are/have attending fewer festivals this year as a result of the increase in fuel costs.

If Ralph Stanley and Ricky Skaggs are feeling a financial crunch, it must be even more difficult for bands with lower booking fees, as fuel costs eat a larger percentage of their revenue. What all this means for he future of bluegrass is yet to be seen. Perhaps more bands and fans will take some advice from the title of the new Grascals CD!

The live (in studio) performance by The Dan Tyminski Band on CMT’s Studio 330 Up Close which we mentioned a few weeks back will be aired on CMT Pure starting later this week.

The songs and interview clips from the show can be viewed now online. Dan and his crack band play four songs from his upcoming Rounder release, Wheels (Heads You Win, Tails I Lose, Wheels, How Many Times and Knock, Knock), and he spends several minutes discussing the project and his move from side man to solo artist on camera.

The Tyminski broadcast on CMT Pure will debut on Saturday, May 31, at 10:00 a.m. (EDT), with encore presentations over the course of the following week (all times eastern US).

• Saturday, 5/31 - 10:00 a.m.
• Sunday, 6/1 - 12:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.
• Monday, 6/2 - 7:30 p.m.
• Tuesday, 6/3 - 11:00 a.m.
• Wednesday, 6/4 - 3:30 p.m.
• Thursday, 6/5 - 11:30 p.m.
• Friday, 6/6 - 1:00 p.m.

CMT Pure is a sister digital television network to CMT’s primary feed, which offers all-day music videos, as opposed to the broader lifestyle programming on CMT. It is available on most digital packages from cable and satellite providers.

Rhonda Vincent’s 10th career video, I Gotta Start Somewhere from her latest album, Good Thing Going, has been added in medium rotation to CMT’s main television channel. It premiered May 1 on CMT’com’s Country Music Blog and debuted on CMT Pure in heavy rotation on May 5.

The video, filmed in Bryson City, NC in the heart of the Smokey Mountains with Los Angeles director Dallas Henry, features Vincent trying to get over a broken relationship by retreating to the mountains. The piece is Vincent’s first Hi-Def video. The Hi-Def format brings into sharp relief the beauty of early spring in the Smoky Mountains as well as the beauty of the seven time IBMA female vocalist of year.

The video can be viewed here at CMT.com.

Released in January, Good Thing Going has topped Billboard’s Top Bluegrass Albums Chart (currently #8), Bluegrass Unlimited’s Top 15 Bluegrass Albums Chart (currently #2), and Bluegrass Music Profile’s Top 10 Bluegrass CDs Chart (currently #1).

The Dallas Morning News says this of Rhonda …..

“She has everything it takes to appeal to the masses: the pedigree, the pipes, the chops and the looks.”

The Dan Tyminski Band will be featured on CMT.com’s Unplugged at Studio 330, debuting on Tuesday May 20.

Dan and the boys will be performing material from his new CD, Wheels, due from Rounder on June 17.

There is a sneak peek video up now at CMT.com.

CMT is marking the month of May (bluegrass month!) with some special programming tomorrow morning (5/13).

From 6:00-8:00 and 9:00-11:00 a.m. (ET/PT) CMT will feature blocks of all bluegrass videos on their popular cable TV network. The music videos will be mixed with live clips from the various bluegrass performances recorded for their Unplugged At Studio 330 series.

If CMT is offered in your cable or satellite package, you can get ready for work with bluegrass videos on Tuesday morning. They will also be launching bluegrass editions this week for their online video series Wide Open Country and Stacked on CMT.com.

This special programming is also being offered to help promote their new bluegrass section at the CMT.com Country Music Blog.

Hey… wait a minute! They’re moving in on our turf!

Just be sure to stop here and read The Bluegrass Blog each day before heading over there to see what they are up to at CMT.com.

The new music video from Rhonda Vincent has debuted this morning on CMT.com. It’s for the song I Gotta Start Somewhere from her latest Rounder project, Good Thing Going.

Watch the full video on CMT’s Country Music Blog.

You can also see some behind-the-scenes photos from the video shoot in our earlier posts here and here.

CMT.com’s Country Music Blog has just published Merlefest remembrances from three bluegrass artists. Rhonda Vincent, Blue Highway (Tim Stafford) and Sierra Hull share some thoughts about last weekend’s mega-fest in North Wilkesboro, NC.

Sierra had an especially poignant memory to cherish from Merlefest ‘08.

“One thing that was particularly exciting about this year’s Merlefest is that it was the first in which I’ve had my new album, Secrets (out May 6 on Rounder) for sale. Upon arriving to the festival Friday morning, I had not even seen a final packaged copy of the record yet. They were shipped directly there, hot off the printer! It was quite funny then having someone in the crowd bring me a copy to sign — that was my first time seeing it!”

Read all of these posts at CMT.com.

Travis Book, bass player and singer with The Infamous Stringdusters, has been engaged by the folks at CMT.com’s County Music Blog to report from the road during their upcoming European tour. The ‘Dusters will spend the entire month of May in Europe, primarily doing shows in Germany, with stops in Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as well - 25 shows in all.

He will post as time and Internet connection allows, hopefully with photos as well. The band will be doing a number of European bluegrass festivals, but most of the shows seem to be theater and club dates.

Travis’ first post was published yesterday (4/28) as a warm up of sorts, and covers the band’s weekend at Merlefest plus performing Saturday on the Grand Ole Opry.

Keep an eye on the County Music Blog in May for updates from the weary travelers.

Mountain Heart came in #3 in the online fan voting in this week’s CMT Pure 12-Pack Countdown for their Road That Never Ends video.

That means that the video will be shown tonight (4/25) on television on CMTP, CMT’s new digital channel. The show airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. (EDT) with rebroadcasts on Saturday (4/26) at 2:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., and on Sunday (4/27) at 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Additional show times later in the week can be found on CMT.com.

Congratulations, guys!

We got a note yesterday from Suzanne Lawson asking us to remind everyone that the Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver video for Sadie’s Got Her New Dress On is in the running for CMT’s Pure 12-Pack Countdown. The song is the debut single for Doyle’s most recent Rounder release, More Behind The Picture Than The Wall.

Visitors to Pure 12-Pack at CMT.com vote Fridays-Wednesdays and the top 12 are posted each Friday. Bluegrass videos have done well in this poll in the past, with Randy Kohrs sitting at #1 for several weeks earlier this year.

To vote for Sadie, just visit CMT.com and put your check next to his photo. You can watch all the videos - including Cadillac Sky’s Born Lonesome - online at the voting site. Multiple votes are allowed, and you can select up to 12 videos with each vote.

In another Doyle Lawson note… His brand new Gospel CD, Help Is On The Way, is available for immediate delivery on orders from Doyle’s web site.

Old Crow Medicine Show is nominated for two CMT Music Awards, both for their I Hear Them All music video from their 2006 CD, Big Iron World.

They are nominated in the Group Video and Wide Open Country Video of the Year categories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug7IgB8MfWE

Alison Krauss also received several nominations - two for Collaborative Video of the Year for her duets with Robert Plant on Gone, Gone Gone and with John Waite on Missing You. The Krauss/Plant video is also nominated in the Wide Open County category and Rocky Schenck is nominated for Video Director for them both.

The complete list of CMT Award nominees can be found at CMT.com, along with links to all the videos.

Edward Morris of CMT News was on hand at last Sunday’s 34th Annual Bluegrass Music Awards, put on by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA). His piece at CMT.com both reviews the show and lists all the winners.

Morris pointed out what was surely a most frustrating reality for SPBGMA…

“In spite of the competing Super Bowl broadcast, the show drew a crowd of several hundred. But it was not an especially demonstrative group. None of the acts really ignited the audience, even though all of them performed some amazing music.”

Read the full article at CMT.com.

Edward Morris has a piece up on the CMT Country Music Blog about Rhonda Vincent and her… shall we say, décolletage.

The tongue-in-cheek article is titled Deep In The Bosom Of Bluegrass, and discusses the writer’s favorable impression of Ms. Vincent’s choice in clothing - and the reaction that the cover of her 2003 CD, One Step Ahead, generated within the bluegrass community.

As one who is pure of heart, I barely took notice of Vincent’s stylistic swashbuckling until it came up at the 2003 International Country Music Conference. There, on a panel called “Country Music and Gender,” banjo player and magazine columnist Murphy Henry grouched about Vincent’s recent epidermal revelations and then flatly declared, “You don’t show cleavage in bluegrass!”

Read the full piece at CMT.com.

Cadillac Sky is this week’s featured artist on CMT.com’s Unplugged at Studio 330. The show offers live in-studio performance and interviews of country artists in an internet-exclusive format. Part of the concept is that these artists perform acoustically for this program, which of course isn’t an issue when they feature bluegrass acts.

We spoke with C-Sky’s Bryan Simpson about getting to record this show…

“The two things I remember about shooting under the ever-attentive eye of the CMT cameras was the never-ceasing war the touch up gal waged with the sweat on our brows and the struggle we fought within ourselves to not say something stupid during the interview.

We did five songs for the show: Born Lonesome, You Again, Homesick Angel (Sonya Isaacs came in to help us on that one-awesome) Basket Case (A Green Day cover that we did once for fun and haven’t been able to stop doing for a year and a half now) and an instrumental, Neighborhood Bully’s Long Look in the Mirror (which landed on the cutting room floor I’m told- only 4 songs were needed).

In the interview we discussed ourselves a lot, and then we spent a little more time on ourselves.”

Watch all the songs and the interview at CMT.com.

The C-Sky boys are using some down time early this year to prepare for their second Skaggs Family CD. They’ll be working with Mike Marshall producing, and are scheduled to start recording in March.

“We’ve basically assembled all the material in our grimy little hands for the new project and we’re thrilled with that part of it, but it will be hard to bid farewell to Blind Man Walking. He’s been a good compadre to us, and it’s gonna be weird giving all our attention to someone new… but time does march on Blind Man Walking, and we both knew it would come to this at some point……?!”

We did a show with Mike in Florida about a year and a half ago. He was down there playing with his first group (The Sunshine Boys, I do believe that was it - sort of a reunion thing) and he happened to hear our set and dug it. He came up on the side of the stage and professed that he wanted to produce us. We were like ‘yeah… but our first project hasn’t come out yet’ …well, when it came time to start the process of the new record, his name came bursting forth from our mouths. We’re all big fans of Mike - the person, and the projects he’s been involved in - and the fact that he’s a little crazy, made it an easy decision.

We have spent time discussing the project with Mike on a untraceable phone line to some extent and will be doing a little boot camp action at an undisclosed location very soon (doesn’t that make it more exciting?).

So everybody start marking your calenders. We are gonna tackle that 500 pound gorilla they call ‘the sophomore slump.”

The music video for Sadie’s Got Her New Dress On, from the latest Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver CD, More Behind The Picture Than The Wall, debuts today at CMT.com. It’s a production video, complete with dancers, Sadie and several new dresses, Doyle and the boys pickin’ at a dance - and even a fight scene!

Watch the full length video at CMT.com.

The band has been hard at work this fall on their next CD, an all Gospel project titled Help Is On The Way. It is set for a March release on Horizon, and Doyle feels like it may be his best recorded effort to date.

We’ll keep you posted as more details about the new CD emerge.

With the television writer’s strike in its sixth week, speculation has been rife that the 2008 American TV season would lean even heavier on reality shows.

Right on time, CMT has announced that they have teamed up with the producers of American Idol to launch Can You Duet, a singing competition where vocal duos go head-to-head in the now familiar Idol format. It is expected to begin airing on CMT in the spring of ‘08, but no firm dates have been set.

Any US citizen or legal resident who is not currently under contract with a record label is eligible to audition. Duos are welcome to provide their own accompaniment, but only acoustic instruments will be allowed. Those selected to compete will need to available in Nashville for up to several weeks during taping, with all expenses covered by the competition.

With as strong a tradition of duo harmony in bluegrass as in country - surely even pre-dating the many popular country duet partners - this seems like a great opportunity for a couple of strong bluegrass singers to step up and be noticed.

Auditions begin this weekend in Long Beach, CA and video taped submissions are being accepted until December 14. There will be a big open call audition in Nashville on January 12, 2008 at the Wildhorse Saloon, after which the selections will be made.

You can find all the pertinent details on the CMT site.

CMT.com has an article on Cherryholmes up today by Edward Morris.

The article describes how the popular family band came to be - a story that will be familiar to their many fans - and includes a lengthy interview with patriarch Jere Cherryholmes.

Among the topics covered are the family’s closeness with Jimmy Martin, and how they came to sing at his memorial service.

“We brought our instruments over there and played music with him and went out to eat with him. He called on the phone quite frequently. … Then he got real sick [with cancer], and we’d call on him. His last Christmas was the Christmas of 2004. He called on Christmas morning and asked us what we were doing. We said we were just going to have Christmas dinner, that we didn’t have any relatives out here. So he said, ‘Well, I’m here by myself. Why don’t you come over and visit me?’ So we went and spent the day with him and ate pecan pie and ice cream and talked. …

“The last time we saw him was about four days before he passed [on May 14, 2005]. We hadn’t taken our instruments over that time because we thought he’d be kind of tired and wouldn’t be up to it. But he asked us to sing for him, and we sang a couple a cappella. One of them, he really liked, and he teared up pretty good. Before we left, he asked me if we would sing that at his funeral. … So we did.”

That song was the Louvin Brothers’ “No One to Sing for Me,” which Cherryholmes recorded on its first Skaggs Family album.

Read the full article at CMT.com.

CMT.com’s Studio 330 Sessions has compiled clips from a number of their bluegrass-themed shows into a best of program they call Masters Of Mandolin.

It includes performances by Ricky Skaggs, Chris Thile, Doyle Lawson, Marty Stuart and Ronnie McCoury. Not all of the clips are instrumentals, but there is some solid mandolin playing in each.

Find them all at CMT.com.

There is an online feature about the latest Larry Sparks release, The Last Suit You Wear, up at CMT.com.

Written by Edward Morris, the piece provides details about the new release, interspersed with comments from Sparks, along with a brief overview of his more than 40 year career in bluegrass music.

Sparks was just 16 and still living in his native Ohio when he began playing occasional dates with the legendary Stanley Brothers. After lead singer Carter Stanley died in 1966, Sparks took his place and held that post for the next three years. Then he quit to form his own band, the Lonesome Ramblers.

He says he learned a lot about stage presence from watching Carter Stanley work. “He was pretty good at it,” Sparks recalls, “and he always had something to say. He could always say it well and make that contact with the audience.”

Also like Stanley, Sparks is a sharp dresser on stage, invariably clad in a tailored suit and wearing a tie, his curly hair immaculately coiffed. “I think it gives the people something to look at,” he says, “[it’s] more of a show look. I’ll admit it’s more comfortable in jeans.”

He points out that his prized 1953 Martin D-28 guitar, with its artist’s palette pick guard, has become part of his image as well. “Some say my pick guard is designed like my hair,” he quips. “That’s what a lot of the old ladies tell me.”

Read the full article at CMT.com.

You can hear audio samples from The Last Suit You Wear in the iTunes Music Store.

Here are a few stories we found online this weekend which many of our readers may enjoy.

CMT.com ran a fun piece earlier this week about Amnesia, a club in San Francisco’s Mission district, that has successfully launched a Monday night Doyle Lawson singalong. What started as a bum’s rush has become a popular club tradition, with Amnesia regulars settling in once a week to belt out their favorite Quicksilver tunes along with Doyle’s CDs.

Owner Shawn Magee explains how it got started.

“[Co-owner] John and I would play the disc and sing along at the top of our lungs as a way to scare people out of the bar at closing time,” Magee says. But some people stuck around. “They even memorized the lyrics and joined in. It got to the point where we had a dozen strong singers crooning 28 DL&Q hits into the wee hours of the morning.”

The Kingsport Times News has a endearing story of a teen aged bluegrass band from Wise County, VA who have been invited to perform at The Smithsonian Folklife Festival next weekend on the Mall in Washington, DC. The Midnight Ramblers have been together just over a year, and are managed by Tony Bates, Wise Police Chief, and father of the band’s bass player, 17 year old Cherise Bates.

Tony talks about how much he enjoys working with these gifted youngsters.

“These kids are very talented, and I guess what they’ve really got going for them right now, on top of their talent, is their age,” Bates said. “Of course, with my job and because of the profession I’m in, when dealing with teens it’s usually troubled teens. We never get to talk to ‘good’ teens unless we stop and strike up a conversation. But these kids, they want to do something with their career in music, and I want to help them get off the ground.”

ukbluegrass.com has an interview posted with Becky Buller, an accomplished bluegrass songwriter, and fiddler with Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike. Becky is set to head for Britain later this month for a two week UK tour with Valerie and company. The interview covers her singing, songwriting and fiddle playing, and includes comment on the upcoming tour:

It seems the band are really looking forward to the UK tour. Becky describes us Brits as “polite and stylish” adding “it’s like coming home for me. Bluegrass music is deeply rooted in the fiddle tune and folk ballad traditions of the British Isles and I’m deeply rooted in bluegrass. Plus, I’m a huge Monty Python fan, and I dig fish and chips!”