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.

Every Western Ever

There's no need a looking for Roy and for Gene,
They've disappeared from the big movie screen,
They've been replaced now by violence galore,
And nobody kisses their horse anymore.

If any of you all have heard the above song, you get my overall feeling for old westerns. I grew up on them and still watch them when I get the chance. I miss the days when our silver screen heroes kissed their horses.  Ever since I can recall I've wanted to be a cowboy, and sometimes, I wish I owned a horse to kiss. I was talking with a fellow western-enthusiast the other day (you may know her from her blog) and we thought about some of the greatest western movie cliches that no western should be without.

1. If you can't decide if you're good or bad, look at your hat or facial hair. 
With the exception of Hopalong Cassidy, good guys wear white hats. Bad guys wear anything from black hats, to grey hats, to bowler hats, to Dapper Dan pomade. Bad guys also have a very wimpy mustache that's almost unnoticeable until you see them up close.

2. Getting shot is no big deal. Getting hung is another story.
For being a common method of threats and intimidation, gunshot wounds are the easiest to patch up. Just take the ol bandanna, put arm in it as a sling, make sure the elderly doc takes a look at it, and that cowboy is up and running by the next scene! Also, shooting a man is punishable by hanging. Cheating at cards is punishable by hanging. Stealing cattle is punishable by hanging. Falsely hanging someone is punishable by hanging. There's no recovering from the trusty necktie party. Bummer.

3. On the white hat team, there are two sidekicks. One thinks of food, and the other thinks of girls.
The hero is lonely and hungry.

4. The bad guys have bigger blabber mouths than the sidekick who thinks of girls.
Even though the sidekick who thinks of girls is always telling the hero's plans to the girl who was actually working for the bad guy, it is usually the bad guys who tell more of the family secrets. How often has the hero been tied up in a chair inside a deserted cabin to have the bad guy say "And now that I have captured you and am going to shoot you and kill you, I will be free to go back into town and rig the election so I will be the mayor and impose ridiculous taxes on the incoming cattle so I can make a fortune and bankrupt cattle farmers from here to Kansas!" Thanks for the info, El Diablo.

In tandem with this we have...

5. Bad guys are all stupid except for the leader.
Seriously, we would never know what the evil plan was if the Boss didn't repeat it for the umpteenth time, and this time conveniently on the silver screen for the viewer's delight. Sounds something like: "I don't get it boss, why do we steal the gold when we can just get a job and earn it?" "Listen, lunkhead, I'll do all the thinking!" Amirite?

6. Of all the Indian tribes that were stirred up in the west, the Apache is the only one to be scared of.
"The Apaches are coming!" No way. Cue the crying women, frightened children, and noble sharpshooters. Sure, history documents that the Apaches made a lot of attacks in the olden days, but that's a different story.  Where are the other tribes? The Apache territory was placed in the southwest from Arizona to the southern side of Texas, a relatively small area. You can't tell me every single western took place in that one teensy area. Oh, you can? Ok then.

7. Dynamite is a game changer.
For some reason, there's always the old timer with dynamite. Or maybe that was just Gabby Hayes. At least he was always around when they needed him.

I anticipate a stampede of western movie enthusiasts pointing out all of their favorite shows or movies that doesn't fall into these cliches. To those people I say hold your horses and holster your guns! You noticed I left out the part about the singing and yodeling posse (and I saw a movie once where they bad guys where the singers), the horse that understands complicated instructions ("Go find Dale and tell her I need some rope, Trigger!") and that one old man named Grubstake who served as the toothless comedic relief. There are a lot of generalizations to be made with any old movies, but the ones listed are my absolute favorites.

As I ride into the sunset, I just want to emphasize how much I miss good old fashioned westerns. Entertainment just ain't the same without them.

Until we meet again, happy trails, saddle pals!

So let's take our hats off to those long gone cowboys
The Hoppys, the Genes, Rex Allens, and Roys,
They've cast a long shadow we're all searching for,
Where nobody kisses their horse anymore.