To celebrate their 15th year in operation, the Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival & Guitar Competition will award $15,000 in scholarships in 2009 to further the study of traditional American music by young people. The festival sets aside a portion of their proceeds each year for this purpose.

Awards up to $500 are available to students in grades 8-12, and high school graduates up to age 21. Students need not be enrolled in a music program, and the scholarship money is intended to assist them in their personal study of traditional music. These funds can be used to cover the cost of their ongoing private instruction.

Non-profit organizations who promote traditional music forms may also apply for grants up to $1,000 to hire instructors or cover student tuition fees as scholarships.

Application forms can be downloaded online, and must be submitted to the Scholarship Committee by March 15, 2009.

A while back Modern Guitars conducted an interview with bluegrass guitarist and luthier Wayne Henderson. The interview was published at the end of September, but we somehow missed it in our IBMA rush.

It is an extensive interview covering Wayne’s unique picking style, his background and introduction to the music, his love for acoustic guitar, his history as a luthier, and the current state of his business.

Included are a handful of photos of Wayne and various instruments he has constructed.

For those interested in acoustic guitar, or luthiery in general, you’ll want to take the time to read this interview.

Last Friday, June 13, the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame held a ceremony inducting its charter members. The ceremony took place at the Walker Center on the campus of Wilkes Community College, the home of Merlefest.

The Hall of Fame is located on the second floor of the Wilkes Heritage Museum, housed in a turn of the century (1902) historical courthouse. The exhibit actually opened on May 29, featuring instruments, biographies, and historical recordings. Intending to include both famous musicians, as well as those who have worked behind the scenes to make the music possible, from a geographic area ranging from northern Georgia into northern Virginia, the Hall of Fame inducted the following persons.

• Doc Watson
• Dolly Parton
• Wayne Henderson
• David Johnson (a studio musician and performer from Wilkes County)
• Earl Scruggs

Deceased inductees:

• The Carter Family
• Ralph Epperson (the founder of radio station WPAQ in Mount Airy)
• Tommy Jarrell (an influential banjo player and fiddler from Surry County)
• Folklorist Ralph Rinzler of the Smithsonian Institution
• Sam Love Queen Sr. (known as the Square Dance King of Western North Carolina)

You can see photos and short bios of each inductee at this link.

Art Menius, a longtime fixture at MerleFest and now director of Appalshop, a nonprofit group in Whitesburg, Ky., that documents and celebrates the culture of Appalachia, will be an honorary inductee. He did much of the preliminary work for the hall of fame.

Art is an active member of the online bluegrass community and we congratulate him on this well deserved honor.

As a Virginia native, I hold a longstanding appreciation for the commonwealth and its art, culture, people and natural beauty. But I’ll not be surprised or disappointed if people entering this new contest prefer as their prize a new Wayne Henderson guitar over a trip for two to my beloved home state.

The contest to promote The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, is sponsored by Virginia.org, the home of the state’s official tourism office online. Grand Prize winners will receive a new Henderson Crooked Road series guitar, and four First Prize winners get an all expenses paid trip to one of four Virginia tourist destinations.

Second prize is a new handcrafted guitar from Anderson-Strickland.

Entries can be submitted online until June 29, 2008 and with your entry, you’ll be able to download a free copy of the song Down On The Crooked Road, the first single from the new CD, RIPE by The Dixie Bee-Liners.