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.

We got a new CD recently that will appeal to folks who like to hear simple old time and folk melodies played on stringed instruments, in an unassuming, relaxed style. It’s called Straight From The Porch, and comes from Curt Baker and Greg Honeycutt, two fine players from southwestern Virginia, who play resonator slide guitar and flatpick guitar respectively.

Greg says that he and Curt have nothing against more modern string music, and follow it closely, in fact. He says that some of his favorite music comes from artists like Blue Highway, Kenny & Amanda Smith and Alison Krauss & Union Station.

“We love the more arranged and produced sound they get, and respect and admire their artistry. What we wanted to do with this CD, though, was record something more sparse and unornamented, that would really let the melodies shine through.

That’s where the title came from - we wanted it to sound like what you would hear when a couple of guys sit together on the porch to pick a few. That’s where this music came from, in earlier times, and we just wanted to recreate that sort of sound, as best we could.”

To help get that sound, they recorded primarily on older instruments, but not the high dollar ones now so prized by collectors. Curt and Greg instead used the Depression-era instruments more likely to be used by “regular folks,” the off-brand guitars sold through mail order catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward.

Much of the material will be familiar, though a few newer songs and a couple of originals are included as well. Greg and Curt brought in some well known pickers to help out, with both Mike Auldridge and Herschel Sizemore lending their skills to the recording. Mike joins Curt for a dobro duet, and Herschel joins the guys on an old timey cut of Big Sciota.

Both Curt and Greg have bluegrass backgrounds, and that influence shows throughout. Shannon Wheeler also guests on fiddle, and Lee Dunbar on banjo.

You can hear samples from all 15 tracks on CDBaby.

There are a number of new posts on The B - our user-submitted section of The Bluegrass Blog - which are worthy of some attention. This is where any registered user can post news or information that they would like to share, or request information from other readers.

Like all posts here on The Bluegrass Blog, registered users are invited to add their comments - and some discussions have become quite heated, and taken on a life of their own. Registration is quick and free, and required to enable us to prevent spambots from littering the site with junk entries.

Some recent posts on The B have heralded the new web site from mandolin legend Herschel Sizemore, a site dedicated to classic cardboard show posters, some thoughtful comments about the value of regional bluegrass societies, and information about a number of festivals.

We invite you all over to visit The B, and to consider submitting items of your own for publication there. The rules are few, but strictly enforced:

1. You must be a registered user at The Bluegrass Blog.
2. Your post must be germane to bluegrass or acoustic music
3. No profanity or abusive language is tolerated
4. All posts are subject to editorial review before publication, and submissions will not be accepted if they fail to meet the criteria above.

Please have a look at these recent posts on The B, and add your own thoughts as well.

Each year, the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend holds a faculty concert on the Saturday night of their three day instructional event. It is the only part of the weekend which is open to the general public (not registered to attend the 3 day workshop) and is always a highlight, both for the students and the local bluegrass community.

The concert will be held this year on Saturday, November 11 at 7:30 at the Holiday Inn Roanoke, the site for all the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend activities.

The format is a loose, relaxed jam-like setting, where the many artists are grouped in a variety of configurations - either solo, duo or in groups - with a good mix of vocal and instrumental music. Both the performers and the audience always enjoy the fun, “no pressure” environment as well as the chance to witness or be a part something as potentially spontaneous as this.

The musicians will sometimes not even choose the song they will perform until a few minutes before they go on stage, a sign both of their high level of skill and professionalism, and the sort of fun they have with this show.

Performing on the RBW faculty concert this year are Eddie Adcock, George Shuffler, Roland White, Craig Smith, Don Rigsby, BlueRidge, Jack Lawrence, Bull Harman, Herschel Sizemore, David McLaughlin, Acoustic Endeavors and many others - plus a number of unannounced surprise guests.

Maps and driving directions can be found on the Roanoke Bluegrass Weekend web site.

When AcuTab’s book of Herschel Sizemore mandolin transcriptions went out of print earlier this year, the company had no plans for a reprint. Though the book had found an appreciative audience with serious students of bluegrass mandolin, declining book sales for their tab books had led AcuTab to focus their efforts on DVD releases, one of which is a Sizemore instructional video.

When Joe Vest, who manages Gibson’s retail operation in the Opry Mills shopping center in Nashville, voiced his interest in keeping the book available in their store, plans were revisited and a reprint was ordered. AcuTab announced this week that the Sizemore transcription book is available once again.

The book contains exact transcriptions (tab and standard notation) for 30 Sizemore mandolin solos, taken from 13 tunes he has recorded on his solo projects. The songs were taken from his Back In Business and My Style CDs, and include such classics as Rebecca, Amandolina and Grey Eagle.

More details can be found on the AcuTab web site.

Here is one more gallery of photos from Saturday at IBMA. I took these in the exhibit hall.

Cherryholmes	Jim Van Cleve	Casey Henry	Steve Huber
Megan Lynch	Reno and Rigsby	Sizemore and Lawless	Dan Miller
Murphy Henry	Tony Williams	Fank Solivan II	Joey Cox

Here’s a nice group of photos from the Exhibit Hall.

Photos by Dave Carney © 2006

Lawson and Reno	Bull Harman	Dan Miller	Herschel Sizemore
The Huber Booth	Katy Daly	Bill Keith	Sewell and Leftwich
Reid and Baucom	Merriam and Bush	Ronnie Reno	Richard Gelardin
Danny Roberts	Roland White	The Smiths	Eberle and Vorndick