As we settle into the Christmas holiday season, perhaps our readers would enjoy revisiting the many memories and reflections we published during Christmas 2007 here on The Bluegrass Blog.

These were contributions from prominent bluegrass artists and personalities – some poignant and thoughtful, and others clever and amusing.

We have everything from Larry Stephenson’s Christmas Surprise to Ron Block’s The Holy Baby. Along the way are pieces from Rhonda Vincent, The Grascals, Curly Seckler, Missy Raines and many others.

You can find them all by following this link.

Wichita Rutherford remembers things most of us were unaware ever happened. When I asked him about his favorite Christmas memories the other day, he poured his heart out, and asked that we share it all with you.

Christmas. What a wonderful time of year. When the snow falls and the family gathers and the fire glows in the living room it reminds me of when I was younger and of the little Bluegrass children who would one day grow up to be stars scampering around the Christmas dinner table. I think about all the times a little Mac Wiseman would be singing “Christmas Memories.” I can still see a tiny Arthel Watson asking his mother when the cornbread would be ready and a short haired Ronnie McCoury jumping up on my lap thinking I was Santa Claus’s brother, Richard, because I was so fat. I’ll never forget the time Tim O’Brien was a toddler and threw up up on my aunt Pearl because he’d been eating tinsel all morning. Then there were the ever precious, pre-teen, Sonny and Bobby Osborne fighting over who would be the first to give me a “wet willie” (that’s when you lick your finger and stick it in somebody’s ear when they’re not looking) while I was wrapping presents for Jerry Douglas and Sam Bush who thought they were hiding in the box I brought the new refrigerator in. It was supposed to be a submarine or a spaceship. I can’t remember which. As a matter of fact I had to spank Ricky Skaggs a few minutes after that for giving Larry Cordle a wedgie… for the 3rd time. Then Doyle Lawson kept sassing me and I couldn’t catch him because he ran so fast. Those 8 year olds are quick. Then there was sweetest little flower of all of Christmas time, the baby, Alison Krauss. Oh what a precious little angel. 2 years old. Oh my goodness, gosh-a-mighty me. I would just talk to her and she would giggle and smile and laugh and scooch around in that little high-chair. Then she threw her fork and put my eye out.

Your Pal,

Wichita

This Christmas dialog comes from Brandi Hart and Buddy Woodward of The Dixie Bee-Liners. ‘Nuff said…

BUDDY: Enter Mike Wallace…dateline, Christmas season 2005. Location, the capital of country music, New York City. We had just put out our first CD only the month before, after much trial, toil, and tearing of hair.

BRANDI: We tore out each other’s hair…

BUDDY: And knitted it into a sweater. We weren’t sure how our music was going to be received, or how to procede… but we felt cautiously contented.

BRANDI: And relieved! That CD was over a year in the making.

BUDDY: So we were trying to figure out our next move, and then our beloved cat Nipper got really sick and died. I remember it was the first weekend in December — and the first snow of the year.

BRANDI: Nipper was the “Music City Kitty.” He was a brave little guy, and believe it or not, he loved country and bluegrass music.

BUDDY: He sure did. He was my pal for 15 years. He used to try to stick his head in the soundhole of my guitar when I was playing.

BRANDI: Did he ever go for the banjo?

BUDDY: Only to sharpen his claws.

BRANDI: Smart kitty! Anyway, losing Nipper was really tough on both of us, but Buddy took it especially hard. He bottles everything up…he’s the strong, silent type, don’t you know.

BUDDY: Strong like bull…

BRANDI: Dumb like chicken!

BUDDY: OUCH! Anyway, a week or so later, I started to feel feverish and had shooting pains in my side. When it didn’t go away — and in fact got worse — we went to a local clinic, where I was diagnosed with shingles. Shingles is caused by the chicken pox virus: basically, your nerve endings erupt in blisters.

BRANDI: That was all kinds of fun, right Buddy?

BUDDY: The fun was only beginning. I still had a couple weeks of rolling around in bed, clutching my side in agony, to look forward to.

BRANDI: Keep in mind, we were starving artists.

BUDDY: No health insurance.

BRANDI: Don’t you know.

BUDDY: After the vet bills, the doctor bills, the pharmacy bills….

BRANDI: Not to mention CD manufacturing and production costs….

BUDDY: Well, let’s just say we weren’t exactly decorating the Christmas tree with dollar bills.

BRANDI: No, we weren’t. In fact, we didn’t even have a Christmas tree.

BUDDY: Remember what we did?

BRANDI: Yeah, we got a wreath from the mini market and hung it on one of our mic stands, using 1/4 jacks for ornaments.

BUDDY: And an old bedsheet for a tree skirt.

BRANDI: Kind of cool and kind of pathetic at the same time.

BUDDY: As Nigel Tufnel says, “there’s a thin line between ‘clever’ and ’stupid’.”

BRANDI: So anyway, we get Buddy home and back in bed, a bottle of Percodan clutched in his feverish paw…and the first thing our other cat, Fang, does is jump right up on Buddy and start kneading on his skin.

BUDDY: Like the Dr. Seuss book, “Hop On Pop.”

BRANDI: OUCH. I think you hit high C.

BUDDY: I was definitely in the Bobby Osborne range.

BRANDI: In his own cat way, I think Fang was trying to help.

BUDDY: So, like, is there a point to this story?

BRANDI: Well yeah, it was our last Christmas in New York — right before all kinds of wonderful and exciting things started to happen to us as a result of putting out that first CD….

BUDDY: So this is sort of a “mighty oaks from small acorns grow” kind of a story?

BRANDI: Hmm, too trite.

BUDDY: “The darkest hour is just before dawn”?

BRANDI: How about “Shingle Bells”?

BUDDY: OUCH!

Banjo picker Bill Evans, author of the popular Banjo For Dummies book, recalls his Christmas of the banjo…

It was Christmas 1970 and, even though my eight track tape player was constantly playing George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band that holiday season, I had somehow decided that I wanted a banjo. Seeing Roy Clark on Hee Haw had put it in my fourteen-year old mind that I could actually play this instrument. I’m not sure if I had even heard bluegrass music at that point, growing up in Norfolk, Virginia.

There was a music store at Ward’s Corner, about a mile away from our house, and an Aria banjo had been placed front and center in the store’s Christmas window arrangement since early November. Priced at over $200, this was way too much of an extravagance for my mother, who supported the two of us on a meager Social Security disability income. She almost never called upon my dad to help out with anything extra — just getting the monthly child support was miracle enough — but somehow an agreement had been worked out to buy that banjo.

We brought the banjo home two weeks before Christmas and it was stored underneath the spare bed in my mother’s bedroom with the promise that I would not open the case until Christmas morning. Well, you know how that worked out. As soon as Mother had left the house on an errand, I pulled the case from underneath the bed and opened it up to take a look.

You can imagine my shock when I found a banjo with a broken resonator. The back of the instrument was a landscape of cracked wood with the resonator’s binding splayed out from the sides at various angles that obviously were not intended by the banjo’s Japanese manufacturer. My heart sank. Did this happen in transport from the music store? Had I done this myself in carrying it into the house? I had held the banjo in my own hands before we bought it and it was fine. Was this some kind of Christmas curse — God’s retribution to me for opening the case before Christmas? Could I not get away with anything?

I then remembered that there were two banjo cases in the back room of the music store. Perhaps, just perhaps, the store owner had switched banjos and had given us the one with broken resonator. I immediately felt guilty even thinking this thought but then another much larger issue loomed in front of me, like a ghost of Christmas present: how could I tell my mother about this? If I confided that I had discovered that the banjo was broken, I would also be admitting that I broke my promise not to look inside the case before Christmas. This was a tough existentialist dilemma for a fourteen-year old suburban teenager.

Full disclosure won out, along with the overriding desire to get a banjo with a good-looking resonator. My mom’s anger mingled with my own somewhat twisted Christmas joy as I watched her chew out the store owner, who promptly traded banjos with apology. When the new new banjo arrived home, it went under the bed once again and was not to be opened before Christmas morning.

This time, I kept my promise.