MLB.com, the official site of Major League Baseball, has noticed the theme of The Gibson Brothers’ recent Sugar Hill release. The title track, Iron & Diamonds, tells an autobiographical story of where the brothers grew up in Lyon Mountain, NY where pretty much everyone was involved in mining - and town baseball.

In a story by staff writer Doug Miller, the Gibsons are interviewed about the album, and growing up in a baseball tradition.

Eric and Leigh both played for the Lyon Mountain Miners out of high school and witnessed a juggernaut of a team, a perennial league championship contender with some serious Major League ties.

The local Kowalowski family, for example, had several players on the team, including Tom, who was signed by the Yankees, although he never made it to the Major Leagues.

“He coached my team and had tons of stories,” Eric says. “Like getting to catch Whitey Ford and hitting a home run off Don Drysdale, who yelled at him and knocked him down the next time he was up.”

Eric says there’s a local legend that the Yankees tried to get in touch with a few other Kowalowski boys for tryouts, but the mining company got the letter and never gave it to them.

“I don’t know how true that is,” Eric says, “but it’s still a good story.”

The article also makes note of how Bill Monroe was a great baseball fan, and how Eric and Leigh make a point to catch as many major league games as they can during teh summer touring season.

You can read the full piece at MLB.com.

Y’all Wire, a large country music video web site, has announced their Top 8 Bluegrass Videos for 2008 to date.

The video ratings are based on the site’s Multivariate Audience Meter, which measures a video’s popularity of “audience engagement.” In addition to online views, this measure includes how often a video is selected as a favorite, forwarded to others, embedded elsewhere, tagged, receives comments and is rated by Y’all Wire users.

Here’s how this measurement system rates bluegrass videos for 2008:

1. Rhonda Vincent, Heartbreaker’s Alibi
2. Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Sadie’s Got Her New Dress On
3. The Grascals, Me and John and Paul
4. The Gibson Brothers, I Got A Woman
5. Sam Bush, The Rivers Gonna Run
6. Lori Willcuts, Black Eyed Susans
7. Ryan Shupe and The Rubberband, Banjo Boy
8. Yonder Mountain String Band, Classic Situation

Y’all Wire also publishes a weekly list of the top 7 bluegrass videos, and you can browse all of them on their site.

Artists or labels who would like to see their videos appear at YallWire.com can register online.

Rick Hayes, mandolinist with The Gibson Brothers, will join Carol Beaugard on Friday morning (8/1) for a discussion about his recent CD, Fly By Night.

Carol’s show, Lonesome Pine RFD, is broadcast from 9:00 a.m. to noon (EDT) on 89.1 FM in the NYC area, and streamed live online at WFDU.fm.

Rick will phone in at 10:30 a.m. to talk about his solo project, the latest from The Gibsons, Iron and Diamonds, the handcrafted mandolins he builds, and his recording studio and graphics business.

Busy guy…

The Gibson Brothers stopped in at the studios of WAMU’s Bluegrass Country on Monday morning (6/2) and recorded an hour’s worth of music for broadcast on BluegrassCountry.org. On-air host Katy Daley tells us that the guys were crowded into their cozy studio space for the session, and she had the front row seat mere inches from the band.

They performed music from their new Sugar Hill CD, Iron & Diamonds, and chatted with Katy about all things Gibson.

You can catch their show during the second hour of Bluegrass Country’s Open Mic show, starting Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. (6/7). The first hour features a set from The Whitetop Mountain Band.

After this coming week, the Gibsons set will switch into the online radio outfit’s Special Programming slot. The complete schedule for both shows can be found on the BluegrassCountry.org web site.

Sugar Hill Records is running a contest on their web site to allow 2 bluegrass fans to attend the Grey Fox festival in July. The contest is to help get the word out about the upcoming release from The Gibson Brothers, Iron & Diamonds, due on April 8.

The winner will receive 2 tickets to the festival and 10 runners-up will get a copy of the CD. There is no purchase required to enter and it can all be done online.

The Bluegrass Blog will also be running a special promotion here for Iron & Diamonds next week. Sugar Hill is allowing us to offer a free track download on Monday (4/7) and another on Tuesday. Each track will only be available for a single day, and only to registered users here on The Bluegrass Blog.

You can read more about the new CD in our earlier interview with Eric Gibson. Three full audio tracks can be heard on the Gibsons’ MySpace page.

Pre-release orders can be placed now at www.sugarhillrecords.com.

Rick Hayes, mandolinist with The Gibson Brothers, is in the studio putting the finishing touches to his first solo CD, Fly By Night, due for release in May. Rick plays mandolin, guitar and bass on the project with Ron Stewart on banjo, Jim VanCleve on fiddle and Josh Swift on dobro.

Hayes handles the lead vocals as well, with the exception of a guest lead each by his bandmates Eric and Leigh Gibson. Harmony vocals were provided by Dwight McCall, the Gibsons and Clay Hess. The CD will also include a bonus track sung by his father, Green Hayes.

Hess contributed three new songs to the project, and Mark Cole, formerly of Larry Sparks & the Lonesome Ramblers, has two.

Fly By Night was recorded in Rick’s studio, Hayes Productions, where he has previously tracked projects like Dwight McCall’s Kentucky Peace of Mind and Clay Hess’s Red Haired Boy. It will be released under his new label Kang Records – an homage to the bluegrass pronunciation of the legendary King Records.

Tomorrow on XM Satellite Radio’s Bluegrass Junction will be the first chance to hear the latest project from The Gibson Brothers. Eric and Leigh Gibson will join host Kyle Cantrell for a track-by-track preview of Iron & Diamonds, their upcoming release due April 8 on Sugar Hill.

This album is their first recorded with the touring band - Eric Gibson on banjo/vocals, Leigh Gibson on guitar/vocals, Rick Hayes on mandolin, Clayton Campbell on fiddle and Mike Barber on bass.

Like most of Bluegrass Junction’s exclusive programming, the Gibson Brothers feature will run several times over the next two weeks. It will debut on Thursday (3/20) at 9:00 a.m., with rebroadcasts scheduled as follows (all times EDT).

• Tuesday (3/25) at 6:00 p.m.
• Sunday (3/30) at 10:00 a.m.
• Saturday (4/5) at 4:00 p.m.
• Tuesday (4/8) at 3:00 p.m.

Eric also shared some thoughts about the new CD with us during an interview posted late last year. He offered some insight into a number of the originals he and Leigh composed for this project, as well as the theme in the title.

“The ‘Iron’ in the title concerns the mines, while the ‘Diamonds’ is a baseball image. Leigh and I played for the Lyon Mountain Miners of the Champlain Valley Baseball League in the late 80s, early 90s. They were sons and grandsons of real Miners, but those guys all had that same us-against-the world attitude that I imagine their ancestors had.”

Read the full interview here.

We just got a note from Eric Gibson, one half of the bluegrass singing and songwriting duo, The Gibson Brothers, with wonderful news.

“Leigh Gibson and his wife Alison welcomed Joseph Arleigh into the world at 1:30 a.m. this morning.”

Congratulations to all the happy Gibson family as they build a bluegrass dynasty!

Another new CD we can expect in 2008 is Iron and Diamonds from The Gibson Brothers, due in March on Sugar Hill Records. It will feature seven new songs written by Eric and Leigh Gibson, plus covers from unexpected artists like Steve Earle and Tom Petty.

The album was recorded with the touring band - Eric Gibson on banjo/vocals, Leigh Gibson on guitar/vocals, Rick Hayes on mandolin, Clayton Campbell on fiddle and Mike Barber on bass. Junior Barber guests on dobro and Erin LaClair (a Gibson sister) adds vocals.

I had a chance to catch up with Eric recently, and got a few comments about the material on this next project.

“The title cut is one we wrote, kind of a tribute to the Lyon Mountain Miners. There’s a town near us in New York called Lyon Mountain that was a mining town for many years — the mines have been closed since the 60s. The town spawned many fine baseball players. It seemed like the miners would come out of the mines with a vengeance, playing a hard-nosed brand of baseball. We imagine that baseball was such a release for those guys after being underground all week.

The ‘Iron’ in the title concerns the mines, while the ‘Diamonds’ is a baseball image. Leigh and I played for the Lyon Mountain Miners of the Champlain Valley Baseball League in the late 80s, early 90s. They were sons and grandsons of real Miners, but those guys all had that same us-against-the world attitude that I imagine their ancestors had.”

I was especially intrigued by the notion of a Tom Petty cover on a Gibson Brothers CD…

“We’re big Tom Petty fans., and we recorded his ‘Cabin Down Below.’ We’ve been jamming on that song for the last year or so in hotel rooms, in green rooms, etc., just for fun. Whenever we’d get the instruments out, our fiddler, Clayton Campbell, would say, ‘Let’s play that Tom Petty song.’

It’s a great feeling to play a song that makes the whole band smile. We’re very excited with how that song turned out. The energy is through the roof.” (more…)

The 2007 edition of Bluegrass Guide is now ready for mailing. This annual publication contains an extensive festival listing, plus band profiles. On the cover this year are The Gibson Brothers, and the new issue contains an in-depth interview conducted by Guide publisher, Candi Sawyer.

The Guide sells for only $10, and can be ordered online for immediate delivery.

Candi is still collecting recipes for her bluegrass cookbook, which should be released this summer. She had originally planned to include them in the ‘07 Bluegrass Guide, but has decided to assemble them in a separate edition.

Recipe submission can be sent by email.

If you like music videos you’re probably disappointed by the lack of bluegrass music videos on the music channels coming in over cable and satellite. Enter Ya’ll Wire. This is a fairly new site that is still under development and assembling content, but it is live.

The site features music videos for the bluegrass, country, and Christian genres. It’s advertiser driven with text ads as well as short video ads that play before/between videos. The ads are not bothersome in the least and I saw at least one of them that was entertaining in its own right.

It’s a great idea, but there really isn’t that much content in the way of bluegrass videos yet.

• Alison Krauss & Union Station - 2 videos
• Yonder Mountain String Band - 2 videos
• Ryan Shupe and The Rubber Band - 2 videos
• Chris Thile
• Sam Bush
• Rhonda Vincent
• The Grascals
• The Gibson Brothers
• Adrienne Young
• Old Crowe Medicine Show
• Lori Willcuts

That’s a total of fourteen at this time, but the site is still seeking contributions from content providers. They do have a contact form for submitting videos. You can’t actually upload anything as they do have to review your request for submission and approve copyrights. I spoke with Ruby Sioux, one of the site’s principles, and we discussed the issue of copyrights.

We pay the publishing societies BMI, SEASC, and are working on an agreement with ASCAP.

We do not allow anyone to post videos to the site without our review. We do not want people to post copyrighted material, unless the copyright holders approve.

(more…)

The folks at Bluegrass Guide will host the first Songwriter Chat session of their new season this evening (10/17). It will be with Eric and Leigh Gibson, and take place at 8:00 p.m. (EDT). Rick Lang of Haley Anna Music will host the session.

All are welcome, and there is no cost to join the chat. To participate (or merely lurk), you need to visit the Bluegrass Guide chat room, and click the “Live Chat” link.

Leigh and Eric Gibson have plenty to celebrate this month. Their latest CD, Red Letter Day, has climbed to the top of the album chart on Bluegrass Unlimited’s National Bluegrass Survey. The chart measures regular airplay on a selected group of prominent bluegrass radio shows, and reaching the number one spot would be good reason for any artist to break out the party hats.

Now comes word that Leigh and his wife Alison welcomed their daughter, Annie Gray, into the world on July 1st. Now that’s something to celebrate!

We send congratulations to all the Gibsons, with wishes for continued success on both fronts.

The latest interview featured on The Nashville Nobody Knows is with the Gibson Brothers.

This week Candace interviews Leigh and Eric Gibson, a brothers duo from northern New York state. Fab sibling harmony, great original songs, great covers, and very honest talented young men. Also included is their new video, a cover of the Ray Charles classic I”ve Got A Woman.

The interview is 30 minutes long. You can also see their music video for the song I’ve Got A woman. It’s just below the link for the interview.

We mentioned a few weeks ago that The Gibson Brothers’ music video for I Got A Woman had been released, and was showing on CMT.com. It has now also been made available on YouTube - great news for Mac computer users, who can not access the video portions of CMT’s site.

YouTube was founded just over a year to allow an easy way for members to upload and share videos over the Internet. There is no charge to become a member (required to upload video), and membership is not required to view videos posted on the site.

See the Gibson Brothers” video here.

We mentioned last month that The Gibson Brothers had shot their very first music video. The song chosen is I Got A Woman, from their latest CD, Red Letter Day.

Eric Gibson has just now passed along that the video is completed and has been released, and can be viewed on CMT.com. It is also expected to be shown on CMT’s Wide Open Country program, though at times not especially convenient for many US TV viewers.

The Gibson Brothers will be Kyle Cantrell’s guests on Studio Special this next few weeks on XM Satellite Radio’s Bluegrass Junction. The Gisons recorded some live music with Kyle in the studio, and discussed their new CD, Red Letter Day, and what they’ve been up to of late.

The show airs for the first time today (3/5), and will repeat several more times in March.

The next Studio Special series will feature Steep Canyon Rangers who recorded a show with Kyle last week.

As we have mentioned previously, if you are already an XM subscriber, Bluegrass Junction can be found on channel 14, or you can listen online when away from your XM receiver. Non-subscribers can register online for a free, 3 day online trial of XM Radio.

We just heard from Eric Gibson of The Gibson Brothers, that their new Sugar Hill project, Red Letter Day, debuted on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart at #5 in its second week of release. The CD is also climbing on the Americana Music Chart, up to #9 this week.

Eric mentioned that they shot their first music video (for I Got A Woman) in the past few weeks, and have been traveling all over the US in support of the new CD.

He also shared this tidbit:

“I love the blog and read it everyday that I can get to a computer.

Thanks Eric - we love it when you talk that way!

The Gibson Brothers will be featured guests on Goin’ Across The Mountain on North Carolina’s radio powerhouse, WNCW 88.7 FM, on Saturday, February 4. The show runs from noon to 6:00 p.m. (EST) and be heard over the air in much of south western NC, or online via live audio streaming.

The Gibsons’ new CD, Red Letter Day, has just recently been released on Sugar Hill Records.

The Gibson Brothers new CD Red Letter Day is soon to be released. It hits the streets on the 24th of this month. We’ll be bringing you some more information, as well as a GrassCast interview with Eric Gibson, in the next week. But for now we wanted to make you aware of a promotion that is being run by WNCW radio. They are giving away twenty copies of the CD and all you have to do is register. It’s free and simple. You can sign up here. The deadline for the give away is January 18th, 2006 at Noon.

More details about the station:
88.7 FM-Spindale 100.3 FM-Charlotte 97.3 FM-Greenville 92.9 FM-Boone
WNCW is a broadcast service of Isothermal Community College
P.O. Box 804, Spindale, NC 28160