But the performances made all the waiting around worthwhile. There was a lot of music on the show that wasn’t bluegrass (Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, the amazing Irma Thomas, and the emcee, actress Minnie Driver), so I won’t talk about that here. Suffice to say it will be well worth tuning in to the PBS special when it airs in March 2010.

Of bluegrass interest was Bela Fleck, who played a couple solo pieces. The one he played on the cello banjo was really cool. It was some music that he learned in Tanzania and Mali on the trip to Africa that resulted in the documentary film Throw Down Your Heart, and the CD of the same name. His second tune started out solo but quickly turned duo when he was joined on stage by Abigail Washburn, who sang I’ve Got The Keys To The Kingdom. His final tune was another duet—this time with Jerry Douglas. He said that they were “kids together on Rounder.” Indeed Bela was only 19 when the label first signed him.

The final act of the evening was Alison Krauss + Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas. It was great to see the band play together again, since they’ve been off doing individual projects for so long. They did five numbers including the first song that Alison recorded for Rounder back when she was a teenager, Too Late to Cry, written by John Pennell, who was in the audience. They sang their last song, A Living Prayer, gathered around one mic. The magical performance earned them a genuine standing ovation long enough to merit an encore, Ghost in this House.

After Ghost everyone pretty much thought the show was over and started leaving until Minnie Driver came back on stage and said that there’s a big finale with everyone singing on stage and “don’t leave!!” The feel-good medley of Angels Watching Over Me/I’ll Fly Away/Down By The Riverside was the perfect ending to the celebratory show.

One last note—part of the background set for the show were huge versions of album covers. It especially tickled me that one of the covers blown up was J.D. Crowe and The New South (Rounder 0044) in colors much more vibrant than they ever were on the cardboard LP jacket. It was, by the way, the second cover. Not the original one with J.D. signaling his intentions.

Well, now we have Rounder Records with a big anniversary of their own, choosing Monday, October 12 to commemorate 40 years in business. They have been recording bluegrass, roots, alternative and Americana music since 1970. A special concert at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House will be filmed for a later broadcast on PBS stations during 2010.

The show will feature performances by Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Irma Thomas, Nathan & The Zydeco Cha Chas along with host (and performer) Minnie Driver. A portion of the proceeds from Monday’s concert will go to the NARAS Grammy In The Schools Programs.

From a recent Rounder press release…

Rounder Records was founded in 1970 by Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Levy and Bill Nowlin.  With only their passionate enthusiasm for American roots music lighting the way, the three Boston area college students cast their lot into the perilous music industry. “Before founding Rounder, we were basically music fans,” says Rounder Records co-founder Ken Irwin. “None of us,” echoes co-conspirator Bill Nowlin, “had any record industry experience whatsoever.”

“I doubt that ‘industry experience’ is a term we would have comprehended at the time we started Rounder!” interjects the third member of the Rounder triumvirate, Marian Leighton.

Ticket information can be found online.

The Grand Prize is a Deering Goodtime banjo, autographed by Steve Martin, whose CD The Crow is set for a May 19 Rounder release.

5 first prize winners will receive autographed Rounder projects from Doyle Lawson, Blue Highway, Michael Cleveland, Dailey & Vincent, The Steeldrivers and The Grascals, plus a $50 Rounder gift certificate. 3 second prize winners will receive the gift certificate, a one year subscription to Bluegrass Unlimited, and a spiffy Rounder T-shirt.

Entries are submitted online – one per person – and will be accepted through June 30. Winners will be announced on July 1.

Full contest details can also be found on the Rounder site.

Bluegrass music fans in Oklahoma and Texas, however, recall Joe’s bluegrass roots, when he performed as a member of Special Edition with Billy Joe Foster in the late 1980s.

Thanks to Rounder Records, Joe is set to head back into the studio this fall to record his first bluegrass project as a solo artist, with a Spring 2009 release expected. There aren’t any details available yet about a producer, song choices or backing musicians, but we expect to get more information at IBMA next week.

Here is a a brief video of Joe discussing his bluegrass roots, prepared by our friends at String Theory Media.

The first of these is The Never-Ending Revival: Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance by Michael F. Scully, in which the author capitalizes on the recent upsurge in interest in “roots music” and “world music.” He examines the roles of Rounder Records and the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance, both organizations that have sought to make folk music widely available, while simultaneously respecting its defining traditions and unique community atmosphere.

In the late 1950s through the 1960s, the folk music revival pervaded the mainstream music industry, with artists such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez singing historically or politically informed ballads based on musical forms from Appalachia and the South. Subsequently, it became commercialized and the basic thrust of this book is Scully’s examination of the ongoing controversy surrounding the profitability of folk music. He explores the lively debates about the difficulty of making commercially accessible music, honoring tradition, and remaining artistically relevant, all without “selling out.”

The author, an attorney by profession and holder of a PhD. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, combines interviews of music executives and practicing folk musicians with his own personal experiences to reveal how this American subculture remains in a “never-ending revival” based on fluid definitions of folk and folk music.

Scully speaks of his intent in one concise paragraph in his introduction …

“This book does not examine every manifestation of post boom revival activity. My approach is thematic and focuses on ongoing intellectual and commercial issues common to revivalism as a whole. For the most part, I examine such issues through the vehicle of the Folk Alliance and Rounder Records. As an umbrella organisation that annually brings together roughly two thousand folk entrepreneurs of varying stripes, the Alliance is a living laboratory that illustrates the revival’s continuing concerns. Rounder, in the words of the New York Times, is ‘folk music’s big small label.’ Begun as an ‘antiprofit collective’ by three left-leaning students who romanticized the folk, it has grown into one of the world’s largest independent record companies. That growth helps illuminate commercial revivalism’s development in the postboom years, a period that encompassed the countercultural movements of the late sixties, the music industry upheavals of the 1990s, and the digital revolution of the twenty-first century.”

The Never-Ending Revival (259 pages, ISBN:0252033337) was published on April 14 and is available from the University of Illinois Press and all good book stores.

The second of the two University of Illinois Press books to which I alluded above is Sing It Pretty – Bess Lomax Hawes: A Memoir. Bess, a folklorist and musicologist herself, was daughter to John Lomax and sister to Alan Lomax. I will turn my attention to that book shortly.

Recorded during three separate sessions at Bias Studios, Springfield, Virginia, the material featured on the album comes from the classic country music period, a more recent country song, old band favourites, two instrumentals and a couple of newly written songs.

Of the newer songs, there is one penned by Chris Stuart and Ivan Rosenberg, Don’t Throw Mamma’s Flowers Away, and a Stan Keach song that is tailor-made for the Southern Grass treatment, The Drowning Sailor.

Other tracks include Raising Cain In Texas, a song that singer Gene Watson recorded and was a Top Twenty hit on the Billboard country chart for him in 1980, which Danny arranged Jimmy Martin-style and a few older country songs: The Convict And The Rose, written by Betty Chapin and Robert A. King and recorded by Marty Robbins and Charlie Moore among others; At the End of a Long Lonely Day, a song that Danny’s father recorded, but now done in a different way and with different lyrics; I Thought I Heard You Calling My Name, done in a honky-tonk style with walking bass; A Memory of You, another song that Bob Paisley sang and that was previously recorded by Jim and Jesse; I’m Coming Back But I Don’t Know When, a song Danny first heard done by Charlie Monroe and Another Bridge to Burn, a song that A&R man Ken Irwin sent Danny’s way. Donnie Eldreth Jr. does a great job singing this song from the repertoires of Little Jimmy Dickens and Ray Price.

The band do a reprise of the popular The Room Over Mine, recorded a few years ago for one of Bob Paisley’s Brandywine CDs, and Leaving Detroit, a Charlie Moore song that Danny did for Rounder [Rounder 0142, 1981], along with a couple of old instrumentals, Sweet Potato Rag and Mountain Sally Ann, the latter of which finds Bobby Lundy using a special banjo tuning to get an old-time sound.

Paisley is understandably delighted ……….

“I am very pleased with the new album. I feel the recording caught the sound and feel of the band perfectly. With producer Ken Irwin’s help, we were able to record some old songs that I’ve wanted to do for some time. Some are straight out hard-driving bluegrass, while others are old country tunes which we have reworked and made fresh again.”

The Southern Grass comprises Danny Paisley (guitar, lead and tenor vocals), Michael Paisley (upright bass), TJ Lundy (fiddle), Bobby Lundy (banjo and baritone vocals) and Donnie Eldreth Jr. (mandolin, lead and tenor vocals). Also included on the sessions was-former-band-member Josh Daniels (guitar), who toured with The Southern Grass for a little over a year.

The band has been very busy on the road, with club dates a new feature of their schedule. On a grander scale the band has visited Europe and played as the headline act at 10th European World of Bluegrass Festival, Voorthuizen, The Netherlands, in May, and played several dates in Australia, most notably the Harrietville Bluegrass Convention, last November. Arrangements are already in place for a busy summer, including an appearance at an Irish music festival in early September.

You can find their full schedule on the band’s web site.

The North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance (Folk Alliance) will honor Rounder Records as a recipient of the 2008 Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Awards (LAAwards) at the Folk Awards Show Wednesday, February 20, 2008, in Memphis, Tennessee.

The awards, a highlight of the Folk Alliance’s annual conference, are given to those who have inspired others, achieved definitive leadership in their field and contributed to the advancement of folk music and/or dance. Each year the LAAwards honor two performers, one living and one legacy, and a person or institution involved in the business or academic side of the folk world, who have devoted their life’s work and talent to the advancement of the performing folk arts. Mavis Staples and the late Tommy Jarrell take the award in the living and legacy categories, respectively.

The Rounder story is well-known, indeed we have recently posted a link to a press article in a Massachusetts newspaper. However, here’s what the Rounder press release says about themselves.

In 1970, with only their passionate enthusiasm for American roots music lighting the way, three Cambridge, Massachusetts college students, Bill Nowlin, Ken Irwin, and Marian Leighton Levy, cast their lot into the perilous music industry. The tenacious trio went the distance: from humble beginnings to what is now America’s premier independent record label. From its early interest in rural American music (via fiddle, stringband, blues, and bluegrass recordings) to an expansive catalogue of more than 2,500 titles running the gamut from folk to world, soul to socas, jazz to juju, Cajun to Celtic, and beyond, Rounder has emerged as the pre-eminent source for vital, uncompromised music of all genres.

Rounder’s award comes in the Business/Industry Lifetime Achievement Award category.

I asked Marian Leighton Levy for her reaction to this news

“It’s wonderful to be honored with Folk Alliance’s Lifetime Achievement Award. It came as a complete surprise and is the kind of recognition of Rounder artists, the label’s history and catalogue, that makes us both pleased as punch and very proud. While it’s always nice to have Rounder recognized within the industry, it’s particularly meaningful when it comes from an organization so devoted to the music and make up of fellow-music lovers like ourselves.”

Two Rounder artists, The SteelDrivers and Vienna Teng, will be performing at conference showcases throughout the week.

The 2008 International Folk Alliance Conference runs from Wednesday, February 20 until Sunday, February 24. The full schedule is available on their web site.

The Folk Alliance was founded in 1989 and seeks to create new and better opportunities for all those involved in the performance folk arts. With thousands of attendees annually, their conference offers a complete view of the business world of traditional and contemporary folk music and dance through showcases, educational seminars, films, and a networking-rich trade show.

On Saturday, February 9, Earl Scruggs was the recipient of a 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at a separate Grammy ceremony in Los Angeles. Here is how he was described…

Earl Scruggs revolutionized and popularized the banjo and developed what is now known worldwide as the “Scruggs Style Picking.” His style of picking is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. For more than 20 years, Scruggs performed with vocalist and guitarist Lester Flatt forming the most famous band in bluegrass history. But Scruggs parted with Flatt and in 1969 formed Earl Scruggs Revue with his three sons. In 2003, Scruggs received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in that same year he and Flatt were ranked No. 24 on “CMT’s 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.”

Using The Grammies as the hook, The Daily News in Newburyport, MA ran a feature over the weekend on Rounder Records. The piece by correspondent Jessica Benson looks at the humble beginnings of the company which is now among the more successful independent music labels in the United States.

“We were simply people who were music fans,” said Leighton Levy, who was an undergrad at Clark University in Worcester at the time. “There’s really no way we could have anticipated how the company was going to grow.”

It started in 1970, when Irwin was hitchhiking home to Cambridge after enjoying a fiddler’s convention down south. He was picked up by a guy who, with no formal training, had started his own record company.

Read the full article, which traces Rounder from their start to the present, online.

And one more comment regarding Merle Haggard having been refused consideration in the Best Bluegrass Album category in the Grammy voting…

This year’s winner, Jim Lauderdale, like Haggard is a country artist who made a decision to release a bluegrass project in 2007, both of which included the word “bluegrass” in its title.

This is not in any way to suggest that Jim’s award is undeserved. Bluegrass Diaries was produced and recorded by Randy Kohrs – a noted bluegrass artist, writer and producer – and aggressively promoted to bluegrass radio and media. Jim was also an active participant in last year’s IBMA convention in Nashville, and was personally involved in asking the bluegrass world to embrace his latest effort.

In the end, bluegrass purists may find fault with either Lauderdale or Haggard being considered for such an award – and we have heard from them – but does it seem odd that one is fair game while the other was labeled as “country?” My own guess is that the decision was based more on Merle Haggard’s long association as a country artist than on the actual recording itself.

With the release coming in February, they’ve just released a short (under 8 minutes) video EPK. The video was produced by Nashville filmmaker Craig Havighurst of String Theory Media. The band narrates along with comments from Sam Bush, The Infamous Stringdusters, and others. We hope you will watch the whole thing.

Thanks to Rounder Records and Blue Highway for choosing The Bluegrass Blog to host this video online.

Their self-titled project features all-original music written within the band, all of them veterans of the music business who now find themselves in Nashville. Richard Bailey is on banjo, Mike Fleming on bass, Mike Henderson on mandolin, Tammy Rogers on fiddle with Chris Stapleton on guitar, and also taking the primary lead vocal spot.

A complete track listing and audio samples from The Steeldrivers can be found on the Rounder web site. The CD will be released on January 29, 2008.

UPDATE: We just heard from Rounder Records, and they tell us the release date has been pushed up to January 15.

There are over 30 artists scheduled to perform at this year’s event, including Marty Stuart, Del McCoury, Jesse McRynolds, Byron Berline, Dan Crary, Doyle Lawson, Tim O’Brien, The Grascals, Michael Cleveland, and more.

In addition to all the great performances you can expect from this line up, there are other events worth noting. The festival will once again host the Bluegrass Masters Film Festival, Bluegrass Legends Concert, new exhibit openings at the museum, Bluegrass Hall of Honor plaque unveilings, instrument workshops, and a Sunday open house at the museum.

The entire event will be recorded by a joint effort of Kentucky Educational Television (KET) and Rounder Records. The recording will then be televised as part of KET’s Jubilee series and released to DVD in the near future by Rounder.

ROMP takes place June 21-22-23, 2007, in three Owensboro venues.

Indoor performances and exhibits are held at the museum, 117 Daviess Street.

The Legends Concert takes place June 21 next door at the RiverPark Center’s Cannon Hall, 101 Daviess Street.

All outdoor performances are held at Yellow Creek Park, 5710 Highway 144.

Tickets for the three day event are $60 for adults and $35 for seniors and students, and may be purchased online at RiverofMusic.org or by calling 888-MY-BANJO. Single day passes will be available at the event for $25.

All proceeds from the festival are used to fund the IBMM’s Video Oral History Project (VOHP).

Again, this sampler is included free, while supplies last, when you buy new albums by Alison Krauss, J.D. Crowe, The Grascals, Donna Hughes, Doyle Lawson, Peter Rowan & Tony Rice, Uncle Earl, and Bradley Walker — all of whom are featured on FRESH CUT BLUEGRASS! Stop by your local Borders to take advantage of this special offer…

This is a great idea to get new bluegrass music in the hands of current bluegrass fans. I’m not sure how many new fans this will reach though. Possibly country fans who buy an Alison Krauss CD, but that’s about it. Honestly I would have liked to have seen this sampler given out with the purchase of another product (or genre) in order to introduce the music to new fans. But for the bluegrass fans, this may encourage you to buy a new CD this month from Borders. And if they have any in-store advertising for the sampler that may help as well.

In the following 36 years Rounder has released over 3,500 records and is still owned by the original three founders.

Congrats guys!

If, like me, you are a fan of Bradley’s music, then the video is worth the time it takes to download it. It’s available in Windows Media and Realplayer formats, sadly no Quicktime version is available. I was able to open the WM version in QT and give it a watch. It is a 30 MB download so be prepared for it.

I should note that I discovered the video thanks to Craig over at String Theory Media. He produced the piece for Rounder and blogged about it recently.

Watch it.

Duets set a high bar, as it was an entire album of just that, Greene performing in duet with a “who’s who” of progressive bluegrass and acoustic artists at the time. Tony Rice, David Grisman, Tony Trischka and JD Crowe are featured, along with jazz pianist Dave Frishberg. The material is primarily taken from the traditional fiddle tune repertoire, but the arrangements and the playing are daring and inventive – especially by 1970s standards.

Rounder has resurrected this gem, set for an online exclusive release on July 25. These online releases are available as an audio CD, but not sold through outside distributors, available only on the Rounder web site.

If you have cherished this fine recording since its original release, this will be a welcome opportunity to purchase its digital counterpart. If you are unfamiliar with the project, and follow Greene’s fiddle work, or that of the various guest artists – or simply appreciate adventurous improvisational acoustic music – you’ll want Duets in your collection.

No audio samples up yet on the Rounder site, but pre-ordering is enabled.

They began to experiment with adding percussion and electric instruments to their original bluegrass sound, and became early pioneers of the then burgeoning folk rock scene in the late 60s and early 70s. Collaborations with such mainstream artists as Gene Clark and The Byrds followed, with the band becoming less recognized as a bluegrass act.

Rounder Records is set to reissue an album from 1979, Decade Waltz, which comes from this folk rock period for The Dillards. Rodney Dillard and Dean Webb are featured, along with Herb Pedersen, Jeff Gilkinson, Douglas Bounsall and Paul York. It is scheduled to be available tomorrow, June 27.

No audio up on the Rounder site at this time.

When this album first hit, the groans of anguish from banjo players could be heard all over the world. Those of us active at the time had been hearing about this young banjo phenom up in Boston for as much as two years before this record came out, and it seemed impossible that he could really be as good as the few who had seen him live had reported.

I’ll never forget the “reality check” I got from listening to Crossing The Tracks that first time. Any pretense I had as a young banjo player of “rewriting the book on banjo” were torn to bits by Bela’s obvious mastery of the instrument, not to mention his vision as a soloist and his obvious skill as a composer. Wow.

Of course, those “groans” from banjo players were only metaphorical, and we all recognized that a major voice had emerged on the instrument. His promise seemed limitless, and it has been a pure joy to follow his career since. I might liken it to the way the mandolin world reacted when Chris Thile hit in earnest – a mix of awe and disbelief, with just a touch of embarrassment.

Some of the material from this release had appeared on Fleck collections already, but I urge anyone interested in Bela’s music, or the modern history of the banjo, to get this reissue.

Also due to be reissued on CD this fall on Rounder:

The four CDs highlighted above are described as Online Exclusives, which seems to mean that they will only be available from the Rounder web site.