We posted in early August about the competition hosted by MountainRidge Music Marketing to select an up-and-coming band to receive their marketing and promotional services at no charge.

They have now announced that the winning MountainRidge Music Flagship Group is The Farewell Drifters, based in Nashville, TN. Members include Zachary Bevill on guitar and lead vocals, Trevor Brandt on banjo, Joshua Britt on mandolin, Clayton Britt on guitar, and Dean Marold on bass. Bevill and Britt write the bulk of the band’s material, which manages to be fresh and adventurous, while remaining accessible to both new and traditional bluegrass fans.

We wrote about them last year when we received a copy of their fine debut CD, Sweet Summer Breeze.

The Drifters have had a very good 2008, being selected as one of the official IBMA Showcase acts (performing on Wednesday evening), and having been picked up by Keith Case & Associates, who now handle their booking. They also showcased at the Americana Music Association earlier this month, and are hard at work on a new CD, with one song featured on the IBMA showcase artist CD which is distributed to all attendees.

MountainRidge will provide them promotion and tour support for 15 dates of their choosing when the company is officially launched during IBMA week. The company will provide the sort of services typically offered by a large label to unsigned artists (or who record for a small, independent label) at what they describe as affordable prices.

You can find out more about MountainRidge on their web site, and audio from The Farewell Drifters on the band’s MySpace page.

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!