Coping without IBMA

There is no describing the joy one gets walking the town of Raleigh, NC alongside all of your bluegrass heroes. It's the most awesome feeling in the world to connect with old friends for your annual jam session. Essentially, it's Disneyland for the bluegrasser. It's what the NQC is to Southern Gospel groups.

....so I'm told.

I have yet to make it to IBMA's World of Bluegrass. Every year, I tune in to the awards show, and I stay glued to social media to watch all of the awesomeness that happens on the other side of the country.

Rest assured if you share these feelings with me that you are not alone.  Even though it seems like everybody and their brother's gerbil goes to IBMA and leaves you at home to do normal life stuff, there is a world of bluegrassers out there who are also missing the fun and frolic. 

So here's the plan: I hereby declare a festival of IBMA proportions for those who cannot attend. We shall call it...

...IBMStay which stands for International Bluegrass Music Staycation. Half the fun, twice the loneliness, for FREE! Let me tell you how it works.

Gather all of your favorite bluegrass records and play them back to back to back. When that is finished, post videos online of yourself picking your favorite tracks from these albums with the hashtag #IBMStay. If you find someone else in your friend's list chose the same song/key as you did, tag them in every single video you post until IBMStay is over. If you happen to come up with really awesome licks or figure out instrumental solos note for note, post a video online of you doing a Workshop and tag every single person you know who plays the same instrument as you. The most crucial part about making this festival work is that you MUST be alone and never make contact with anybody face-to-face.

Otherwise, you might as well had gone to Raleigh. 

Dressing for Success: A step-by-step guide (with Pictures)

As the Father of Bluegrass once told a fiddler of his: "You can't play bluegrass wearing striped britches." Other than that, we conclude, anything goes.

My band and I strive to always dress well for our shows. In fact, if there were an IBMA Award for best dressed band, I would like to think many of y'all would cast a vote for us (knowing that the Del McCoury Band and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver would win each year anyway).

Ask any bluegrass band if there is a right way or a wrong way to dress on stage and they will give you unintelligible answers. No one could mistake the Kentucky Derby look of the early Bluegrass Boys, then the string ties and hats of Flatt and Scruggs. But then along came a checkered cowboy hat from Jimmy Martin, followed by who-knows-what from the inimitable John Duffey.

Like this.

It's okay. I hear your cries for answers. To sum up the bluegrass cut of clothes as best as possible, we require a formally casual country themed business attire, where bolo ties and boots didn't die with the 90s.  Hats and mullets optional.

Let's break this down.

The above example is only okay in two situations. One: if you're starting a Southern Gospel group, and two: if you're going for the look of this classic album cover from 1999:

Notice how the camo hat in the first picture really makes his head look like it's not there. That's what camo does. Notice in the second picture, they look like they actually know what they are doing (unlike in the first picture).

Speaking of hats, let's talk about that.

The first bluegrass band never went without hats. Flatt and Scruggs seldom went without hats. However, if hats aren't your thing, you can omit them. Just make sure you have epic hair (a la Del McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, Larry Sparks, etc.)

Check out the side-by-side difference between the epic hat look and the epic hair look. If you can't be the Meyerband, you can always be the Johnson Mountain Boys.

Let's talk about ties. As far as which ones to wear, I would argue that Hot Rize is the clear winner.

Honorable mentions would be the following:

Basically anything these guys wear works.

And finally,

Sometimes I feel like we're the only group who still wears these bolo ties, but I could be wrong....

If you can't bring yourself to wear a suit and tie, you have the ever popular (and ever in style) Hawaiian shirt.

So there you have a by-no-means-exhaustive look at the official bluegrass dress code. There are so many different "looks" to a bluegrass band that it is a little difficult to precisely pin it down. 

Hopefully, you found this post to be enlightening. May your band always look like this:

And NEVER like this:

I told you John Duffey was eccentric. Now he's got Keith Whitley in on it, too.

Gif me a Break.

I would like to point out once and for all that "gif" is pronounced with a hard g sound as in "Graphic Image File.

This may not seem like a huge deal to most, but I confess that when I hear someone pronounce it "jif", a little piece of my soul dies.

To make my point as clear as possible, and at the suggestion of some friends, I did what any other bluegrass musician would've done: I wrote a protest song.

As far as protest songs go, this is my first one. However, I hope that it possibly makes people think and I hope that it really shows the "jif" people the error of their ways.

Please share if you pronounce gif the correct way! The Internet community needs you. Badly.

Always Believe El Camarero

I'm not sure if years of playing guitar have given me tough fingers, or if every waiter/waitress I've ever had thinks I look like a wimp. But every time I'm told "Careful, that plate is hot", it only turns out to be mildly warm. At the most, it's hot, but just cool enough for me to scoot across to my corner of the table.

I'm used to that by now. Every time they caution me to be careful, I nod and say thanks, and reach out for my plate. I don't even think twice now. Silly them.

Today, my family and I visited a local Mexican restaurant called El Torito. A family favorite that we've been visiting since before I was born. As we walked through la puerta, a Mexican gentleman showed us to our mesa. He said "Buenos dias, can I get you something to drink?" Which, if my college level Spanish is correct, means "Good dias, can I get you something to drink?"  What a friendly guy! But then, I learned a valuable lesson just a few moments later.

That lesson came when el camarero brought my cheese enchilada and chicken flautas to the table. "Muy caliente!" he cautioned. My college Spanish kicked into gear and I understood that he was telling me my plate was very hot. I grinned as he set my plate on the table. I'd heard this one before. Sensing a possibility of warmth coming from my plate, I played it safe and used my very strong pinkies to scoot my plate a little closer to where I was sitting.

Ouch.

When you have nerves of steel like I do, it is easy to hide any feelings you might have, or any emotions that may come. Somehow, though, el camarero figured out that I was in seething pain. Or at least my pinkies were. He stood at the end of our table and shook his head. "I told you so." he quite audibly scolded.

I laughed. My parents laughed. My siblings laughed. The table behind me laughed. El camarero laughed. My enchilada probably laughed too. We all had a good time.

So let me give you all this word of advice. When you go to El Torito, and your camarero says your plate is muy caliente, believe him. He's not kidding.

Bluegrass Breakdown Ep. 5: Don't Cross the River

We all know that sometimes, bluegrass lyrics make a little less than a good amount of sense. That's what I'm here for. I will explain the meaning of bluegrass songs verse by verse. Today we visit Don't Cross the River.

Before I begin, I just know some of you are scratching your heads trying to think of a bluegrass song by that title and only coming up with the song by America.  Picture that version in your head, now add Terry Baucom's banjo style to it.

Presto.

Now, let's begin.

There's a little girl out lyin' on her own
She's got a broken heart
She's not the kind to take you down for long
She knows and plays it smart

Honesty is the best policy in this instance, for we clearly see an image of a little girl fibbing out of depression. The silver lining is that she never tells untruths too long because she's smarter than that. Be like that little girl. Stop lying. We all know the real truth.

And if she's comin' she's showed no mark
She's heard no whistle blowin' from the dark
She feels like leavin' and she don't know why
Without no bridges she's trapped, so I sigh

There is no greater rush than a songwriter writing your name into a song. "Showed no Mark". That's me!! This is my favorite verse. What the songs says is true: she never showed me she was coming just like the song says. I can vouch. Every thing seems to be quiet where she lives and the bridge is washed out anyway.

Don't cross the river if you can't swim the tide
Don't try denyin' livin' on the other side
All your life
You were on your own

Sage advice for all you Olympic Swimming trainees. Michael Phelps didn't win no gold medals by denying living on the other side all his life. He spent countless hours swimming to school uphill both ways in the snow. He was on his own.

If you want you can ride my train
And soon forget the reason that you're leaving
You'll lose yourself and then sometime
Maybe even save yourself some grievin'

Just what the doc ordered: A scenic train ride to leave all your worries and cares behind. A time to actually forget that you jumped on the train to get somewhere important. Also, you always lose yourself when you're leaving and forget your train tickets on the piano at home. Maybe next time you'll save yourself the grieving for once and put them where you'll remember them.

Oh, oh, oh, oh

The jury was out on whether the actual lyrics were "Oh, oh, oh, etc." as written here, or if it was actually "Whoa, whoa, whoa, etc.".  My official committee of professional linguists, zealous poets, and unbathed hippies agreed that the actual lyrics should be read as "Oh, oh, oh" primarily because of the sharpness of the individual words and the individuality of the syllables making the overall effect more poetic than "Whoa, whoa, whoa," since that's only nonsensical verbal sounds (and not real words).

Don't cross the river if you can't swim the tide
Don't try denyin' livin' on the other side
Don't cross the river if you can't swim the tide
Don't try denyin' livin' on the other side
All your life
You were on your own

Let them just reiterate this sage point again and again. It bears repeating apparently.

I must admit this one was probably the hardest to interpret out of all of the Bluegrass Breakdown episodes I've had. Who could understand lyrics when the Duke of Drive himself is playing banjo over them?  Much too busy listening to the banjo work.