Ten years ago a CD was released that was probably the very first mashup to feature bluegrass music (mashed with some groovy funk). The CD was GrooveGrass 101, produced by Scott Rouse.

This week Warner Brothers released the CD on iTunes for the first time and I’m told it’s selling quite well.

The CD features bluegrass legend Doc Watson together with Bootsy Collins on Wabash Cannonball and Blue Moon of Kentucky. Other stars making appearances include Mac Wiseman, Jerry Douglas, Ronnie and Rob McCoury, Jason Carter, Mike Bub, Bernie Leden (from the Eagles), and many more. Flatpicking master Steve Kaufman rips off some great solos on Little Cabin Home on the Hill mixed up with all the groovy stuff.

If you’ve never heard GrooveGrass 101, do yourself a favor and go give it a listen on iTunes.

The GrooveGrass Boyz have tapped media marketing wizard, Wichita Rutherford, to direct the video for their new single “Crank That (Farmer Boy)”. When I asked Wichita about it here’s what he had to say:

The folks at GrooveGrass Recordings asked me to direct a video for the new single by The GrooveGrass Boyz about a song called ‘Crank That (Farmer Boy)’. It’s a ‘GrooveGrass’ or “Country” version of the gigantic hit ‘Crank That (Soulja Boy)’. We thought it would be fun to have a contest where people would send in videos of themselves doing the Soulja Boy dance and then I’d put the best ones in our video. They’ve got until February 15th to do a quick 30 second video and get it uploaded to me. The details are over at 5MinutesWithWichita.com. We’ve already done the initial shooting and here are some photos from it. The single will be on iTunes in about 2 weeks.

Scott Rouse produced the single with a variety of Bluegrass musicians as well as “infamous” Bluegrass musicians. The original GrooveGrass Boyz are Doc Watson, Bootsy Collins, Mac Wiseman and The Del McCoury Band. I guess we’ll have to wait and see who’s on this track.

Here are the photos Wichita sent:

Mac Wiseman did his last show at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville last night. The show was billed with John Prine as the headliner, but Mac performed as well. Judging from the picture of the two artists together, Prine is cognizant of Mac’s importance as a music figure.

Our friend Scott Rouse was on hand for the show and sent us a couple photos taken backstage afterwards.

Mac has contributed so much to this music over the years. He truly is a bluegrass great!

Bluegrass has been getting cozy with the guys from Led Zeppelin recently. From the success of the duet album by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, to John Paul Jones producing Uncle Earl, the connection is there.

The rock band of legend just performed their first full concert in 27 years at the O2 Arena in London, UK, Monday night. This was a full on rock concert, but the bluegrass connection was still alive.

We just heard from our friend Scott Rouse, the Nashville producer responsible for the Blue Highway CD MarbleTown, who was at the show courtesy of John Paul Jones himself.

John Paul Jones invited his bluegrass buddies to London for the Zeppelin show. He gave us killer seats. John’s wife, Mo, really took great care of us all. Here’s me, Paczosa, Ronnie and Rob. We all got backstage after show passes and had a blast. The Bluegrass contingent was full on.

From what Scott tells me, the whole bunch headed over to Jones’ house for a jam session after the concert. So who’s the “whole bunch” you ask?

• John Cowan
• Bela Fleck
• the Uncle Earl girls
• Ronnie & Rob McCoury
• Gary Paczosa
• Scott Rouse
• David Ferguson
• John Carter Cash and Laura Cash
• Chris Eldridge

Sounds like a jam I would have liked to heard!

Merlefest 2007 is over and the reports are that it was a spectacular festival. I’ve heard several people recount for me the highlights of this year’s event. But my friend Scott Rouse, a Nashville based producer, had what must have been the coolest experience of the festival this year. Scott spent Thursday afternoon with Doc Watson and Elvis Costello.

He and Doc hung out in my hotel room and laughed and told stories for a little over 30 minutes. They both had a great time. Elvis’ “cool” is for real. what an awesome guy. He was relaxed and there to listen to whatever Doc wanted to say and talk about. Doc told stories from his childhood and so did Elvis. They talked about their wives and the festival and even food. Afterwards when Elvis left Doc said “That Elvis Costello is a good boy. I really like him. Yeah, he’ll do.”

Scott’s dad, Jim Rouse, was there with them and took the picture.

Elvis Costello at Merlefest? I wondered how that went over, but Scott assured me it was a hit.

Elvis did an awesome show and was welcomed with open arms into the Bluegrass world when he let go with some of his biggest tunes done acoustically. Sam Bush on mandolin, Byron House on bass etc. Its hard to go wrong there. His show floored the crowd.

His respect and love for Bluegrass runs deep. He, for real, loves it. The British really understand the importance of the history of bluegrass and music in general. They get all up in it. Take John Paul Jones for instance. He spent a couple of nights at the Carter family’s home. He’s read the book twice and the Carter family is one of the first things he wants to talk about when you talk to him. He’s totally obsessed with absorbing and learning all he can about our music. And it isn’t just the non de-script, overall view type info most people get from just learning a little bit about bluegrass and its history. He can go DEEP into where our music came from. There’s a guy, who was in one of the biggest rock bands of all time, and he is totally humbled by Mother Maybelle. It really makes you think about how important our heroes really are, not only to us, but to the most potent musicians in the world.

Yes, bluegrass may be a smaller genre in the larger music world, but it’s important. It’s important to us, and it’s important to musicians in other genres as well. And if you like good music, I guess you almost have to like Doc Watson!

The internet is all abuzz right now talking about the voice of Cyndi Wheeler. Cyndi played the pre-awards party at IBMA. The party was sponsored by BMI. Cyndi performed with Blue Highway, along with Sam Bush’s rhythm section, as her band. She covered standards like September Song and What a Difference a Day Makes.

Ed Morris at CMT wrote a piece about the awards and mentioned Cyndi’s performance at the pre-show party.

The highlight of that event was a performance by singer Cyndi Wheeler, who, backed by Blue Highway, beamed out irresistibly jazzy incarnations of such pop standards as “Dreamer’s Holiday,” “September Song” and “What a Difference a Day Makes.” She is produced by Scott Rouse, who also produces Blue Highway. An album of these tunes is due out soon.

John over at The Sheep’s Crib is also talking about Cyndi and had this to say.

You’re a hard-hearted meanie if you don’t like this voice.

Cyndi has been singing duets with bluegrass artists for some time now. Her fist, as far as I am aware, was a duet with Del McCoury on the tune I’ll Be Home For Christmas from the CD Christmas On The Mountain. She also joined Charlie Daniels for a duet rendition of Softly and Tenderly on his CD Songs From The Longleaf Pines. More recently she joined Blue Highway on their latest CD, Marbletown, for a duet with Tim Stafford on the song Quarter Moon.

Her upcoming album, which producer Scott Rouse tells me will be out sometime in the spring, features a duet with Ricky Skaggs on the title track, Tonight You Belong To Me. The song features the two voices with accompaniment from Ronnie McCoury’s mandolin.

You can hear several cuts from her upcoming CD on her website at CyndiWheeler.com.

As John mentioned in his earlier post we recorded an interview with Charlie Daniels for this week’s edition of The GrassCast. Prior to the interview I had a chance to email a few questions to Scott Rouse the producer. At the time I was just gathering background information for the interview, but we felt Scott’s comments were interesting and valuable enough to include them as an introduction to the podcast. At some point we’ll conduct an interview with Scott for The GrassCast. For now, here’s my question and answer with him about Charlie’s CD.
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Country music superstar Charlie Daniels was in the news over the Thanksgiving weekend for his work with Operation Heartstrings, an effort to provide music for US military personnel overseas. On a trip to visit and entertain the troops earlier this year, Daniels found many service members who played or enjoyed music, but were hampered by the scarcity of resources available to them, or their inability or unwillingness to bring their personal instruments along to Iraq or Afghanistan. Through the generosity of a number of American companies, musical instruments, CDs, DVDs, laptop computers and CD/DVD players have been donated and distributed to men and women in uniform to help them ease the loneliness and isolation that service away from home can bring.

Our friends at Gibson donated 100 Epiphone guitars for this effort, and we have a photo (below) of Charlie Daniels with Gibson CEO Henry Juskiewicz and Major General Gus Hartgett of the TN National Guard as the guitars were being loaded for delivery to service men and women abroad.

Many of our readers recognize Charlie Daniels from his multiple hits on country and pop radio, but many not realize that not only does he have deep roots in bluegrass music, but had also released a bluegrass gospel CD earlier this year, entitled Songs From The Longleaf Pines. The CD features some riveting performances from bluegrass legends like Earl Scruggs and Mac Wiseman, along with members of The Del McCoury Band.

Charlie includes some gospel favorites like How Great Thou Art and bluegrass gospel classics like Walkin’ In Jerusalem, Working On a Building and The Old Crossroads. His vocal delivery is more familiar Charlie Daniels - a mix of singing and recitation - than typical bluegrass, but his passion for the music and his sincerity in the message is inescapable. Produced by Scott Rouse, whose recent credits include stellar work on Blue Highway’s Marbletown, the Daniels CD is sonically stellar and the arrangements are clever and engaging.

If you have a Charlie Daniels fan on your Christmas list, this CD might provide a perfect introduction to bluegrass music. There don’t appear to be any audio samples available on the Charlie Daniels web site, but we did find some here.

We had an opportunity to discuss both the genesis of Operation Heartstrings and his love for bluegrass music with Charlie Daniels last week, and this interview will be available later this week on The GrassCast - our weekly audio podcast.

If you - or your company - would like to support Operation Heartstrings, you can make a donation via the Stars For Stripes web site.