Regular readers of The Bluegrass Blog know that we always like to highlight the efforts of young bluegrass musicians - and the people who assist them in learning to play. We have a number of stories we would like to share along those lines.

Last year around this time, we ran a piece about Scott Gates and Pacific Ocean Bluegrass, a group of California teens who donated a portion of their CD sales to help fund scholarships for young pickers to attend the California Bluegrass Association’s annual Music Camp.

The camp is held in conjunction with CBA’s Father’s Day Festival each June, where they also host a Kids On Bluegrass event. Players age 3 to 18 are allowed to audition to be part of a group performance at the festival, with coaching and rehearsals held during the year before each show.

Several videos from this year’s Kids On Bluegrass show have been posted on YouTube where you can see a gaggle of eager young pickers joining Rhonda Vincent on stage.

Our own local paper, The Roanoke Times, has a piece this week about another young bluegrass band, The Cana Ramblers. They are a family band featuring three winners of the Galax Old Fiddlers Convention youth competition.

Read the article by Ralph Berrier on the paper’s web site, and check out some photos and audio of the Ramblers at Galax in a multimedia slide show.

Dean Hoffmeyer - banjo playing photographer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch - has posted a very nice multi-media slide show of images from the 72nd Annual Galax Old Fiddlers Convention on the Times-Dispatch web site.

The photos are splendid and truly capture the “Galax vibe.” If you look closely, you’ll even see a few bluegrass notables enjoying themselves at Felts Park.

The paper also ran a piece on the festival in their print edition last Sunday, which can be read online.

UPDATE 8/10: There is now a second multimedia slide show from Galax posted at inRich.com, the Times-Dispatch site.

We previously told you about Bob Yonke, The Bluegrass Painter, and his work depicting bluegrass in watercolor. If you didn’t check out his work then, I would encourage you to do so now.

Bob very kindly sent me a print the other day. The painting is of a jam session under the yellow tent at the Old Fiddler’s Convention in Galax, VA. The painting captures the colors, the crowd, and the fiddle sounds of Galax.

He tells me this is part of a new series he is working on. This particular painting is not represented anywhere on his site at this time so I can’t show it to you. The print is nicely matted in a double matt and ready for framing. I just happen to have an extra frame laying around so this piece of art will be going on the wall here at the studio today.

With this painting, I’d say this new series is off to a good start. Once the project is completed and available on Yonke’s website, we’ll bring you an update about it. For now, you can browse his other offerings, including The Bluegrass Collection which represents classic bluegrass in muted earth tones. The picture included in this post is the painting Kentucky Mandolin, from this series.