The Blue Ridge Parkway is a venerable institution in our part of the world. This scenic drive runs 469 miles, from Shenandoah National Park (south of Charlottesville, VA) to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina (southwest of Asheville).

The road winds through the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests in Virginia, and the Pisgah and Nantahal in North Carolina. Almost every mile avoids population centers of any kind, and with easy access off and on along the way, is a tourist favorite for its spectacular mountain vistas of the Blue Ridge region.

Of course this region has been home to a great deal of bluegrass and old time music, and the seminal artists who defined it. The National Parks Service and the National Council for the Traditional Arts jointly operate a venue near Galax, VA to acknowledge the musical history of the area, The Blue Ridge Music Center.

The Parkway is celebrating 2010 as their 75th Anniversary with a full year’s worth of special events along the way. Things kick off this Saturday with a benefit show near Asheville, NC featuring what will surely be a memorable musical aggregation.

Billed as The Blue Ridge All Stars, this one-time grouping of musicians born and bred in the VA/NC mountain region includes Doyle Lawson on mandolin, Sammy Shelor on banjo, Bryan Sutton on guitar, Jim Van Cleve on fiddle and Tim Surrett on bass.

Jim told us that Bryan Sutton put the group together.

“Bryan Sutton called me back in April or May about this show, and it’s something I’ve been looking forward to ever since then! It’s a big honor to be involved in a BIG SHOW of this nature, and the band Bryan has assembled will be a BLAST to play with!!!”

Singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith is also on the show, which will be held in the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at the Asheville Civic Center. Proceeds from the show will go towards the funding for the 75th Anniversary events during 2010.

You can find full concert details on the BRP 75th site.

Here is a gallery of photos from last night’s (9/29) IBMA festivities.

We are very fortunate this year to have Dean Hoffmeyer shooting for us during World Of Bluegrass. He is a Pulitzer-nominated photographer with The Richmond Times Dispatch, and his work speaks for itself. Dean’s work also graces a number of recent bluegrass CD covers, including the recent Grasstowne and Jason Davis projects.

Dean will be providing photos over the next few days, including Thursday night’s Awards Show. He will posting them as soon as he shoots, so we’ll have galleries going up during the show, while Brance and I are posting the winners in real time here on The Bluegrass Blog.

Everyone seemed to get a kick out of the fake trailer for Jim Van Cleve’s AcuTab fiddle DVD which we ran last week. Jim said that he heard from people all over the country who had gotten a chuckle from watching it.

But lest you think the DVD itself is a joke, here is the real trailer, which offers a glimpse of what is actually covered in this 4 hour presentation, titled Become A More Complete Fiddler.

Van Cleve has long been regarded as one of bluegrass and progressive acoustic music’s most technically versatile fiddlers, and in this new 2-DVD package, Jim shares a great deal of the insight and experience he has gained over the past ten years of performing and touring professionally. He teaches four songs that he has recorded (Nature Of The Beast, Devil’s Courthouse, Wheel Hoss and #6 Barn Dance) but the largest part of the presentation is dedicated to finding melody-based breaks and improvising on familiar bluegrass standards.

He takes Banks Of The Ohio and Pretty Polly and demonstrates them down in 3 different keys. Before going over them, Jim breaks down the scale and common positions for each key in turn. He shows where to find the melody, and where adjacent double stops are located, as well as licks and phrases that suit each song. He also goes over the different scales that inform these two songs, one in a diatonic major key, and the other based on a Dorian, “mountain modal” scale.

Attention throughout is given to both playing a melody-based solo and what a fiddle can do to assist the band sound in accompaniment. A booklet with transcriptions is also included.

The DVD will begin shipping next week (9/22) and AcuTab is accepting orders now. More details can be found on the AcuTab site.

AcuTab is soon to release a new instructional DVD from Mountain Heart fiddler, Jim Van Cleve. The product is actually a two disc set, featuring over 4 hours of instruction from Jim.

Disc 1 contains a good deal of instruction in the areas of technique, practice routines, ear training, transposing tunes to various keys, etc. Examples are given using familiar bluegrass tunes such as 9lb Hammer, Banks of the Ohio, and continues on disc two with Pretty Polly.

Following all that instruction, Jim then teaches several of his most requested tunes, to round out the program.

The video trailer for the project was just finished yesterday and we’ve got an exclusive look at it for our readers here on The Bluegrass Blog. This is just a short showcase of the techniques and tunes you’ll learn on this DVD.

Enjoy…

John adds: Is this April Fools Day and I didn’t notice?