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.