The promoters of the Gathering Of The Vibes festival have come up with a clever way to get you to tune in for their live webcast tonight (4/2) when they announce this year’s lineup.

After the announcements, they will run a video of a live performance at The Gathering in 2004 by The Masters Of Bluegrass: Bryn Bright, Sam Bush, Vassar Clements, Peter Rowan, Gordon Stone, and Tony Trischka.

The webcast begins at 8:00 p.m. (EDT) on the festival website.

The 2009 fest runs July 23-26 in Bridgeport, CT.

Long-time students of bluegrass instruments will recall with fondness the name Oak Publications, a division of Music Sales that released some fine instructional manuals for banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle and bass starting in the 1970s. While the brand has remained active since, some of those early titles have been unavailable for years – though AcuTab reissued their classic (and massive) – Masters of the 5 String Banjo book.

Oak has reprinted a number those early books, and two of particular interest to the bluegrass community are among them. Both Bill Keith and the late Vassar Clements had transcription books as a part of Oak’s Bluegrass Masters series – which also featured books on Kenny Baker, Jesse McReynolds and Clarence White – both reissued earlier this year.

Clements’ fiddle book was written by Matt Glaser, current chair of the string department at Berklee College of Music, and the Keith banjo book was written by Tony Trischka with Bill’s assistance. The Vassar transcriptions are in standard notation and the Keith in tablature. Both feature information on the recordings from which the transcriptions were taken.

Look for Oak titles wherever bluegrass instructional materials are sold.

HT: PlayBetterBluegrass.com

WAMU, and it’s online sister station BluegrassCountry.org, are celebrating the summer of 2007 as their 40th year broadcasting bluegrass music. It was in 1967 that Dick Spottswood and Gary Henderson, who were among the founders of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine that same year, launched a program by that name on July 2, carried on WAMU 88.5 FM, broadcast from the campus of the American University in Washington, DC.

To help mark the anniversary, the folks at WAMU have searched through their archives and are running some special programs over the next few weeks.

The first, Katy Daley’s 1975 interview with Vassar Clements, starts tonight (8/28) at 10:48 p.m. The show is called Fiddle Players Young and Old, and will run repeatedly on BluegrassCountry.org over the next few weeks. The discussion with Vassar was recorded at DC’s legendary Cellar Door during his debut tour as a band leader, and was also the first interview Katy recorded for WAMU as a cub bluegrass radio host.

It runs again on Sunday (8/29) at 1:04 a.m., and also includes an interview with 12 year fiddler Roland Clark, who spoke with Michelle Mercer of NPR. Find future air times by checking the BluegrassCountry.org schedule online.

You can read more of the history of bluegrass programming on WAMU and BluegrassCountry.org on their web site.

The Del McCoury Band has posted four new video clips on their MySpace page. They are taken from the second All Star Bluegrass Celebration concert at The Grand Ole Opry in April 2003, aired on PBS, and available on DVD for PBS pledge drive donors when the program was broadcast.

The clips show Del and the band performing with Vince Gill and the late Vassar Clements. Songs include My Walkin’ Shoes Don’t Fit Me Anymore (with Vince), Orange Blossom Special and Lonesome Fiddle Blues (with Vassar) and My Love Will Not Change.

Find them all by clicking on the My Videos link on Del’s MySpace page.