Opinion / Humor

I addressed the issue of name-dropping early on in the life of this column. Béla said he was pretty happy with it, so I felt no need to follow up. Dan and Suzanne had also given it their stamp of

We haven’t discussed haiku much lately, and I'm not sure with all that's going on in the country and the world, if anyone has noticed. You'll just have to trust me on this. Haiku, for those who've missed all the earlier

We sometimes exaggerate in bluegrass music as a way of compensating for the fact that we aren't generally playing music for a mass market audience. And, even though most of us actually like that smaller-scale community feel of our music

Some time ago, I proposed a video game for songwriters that would allow them to experience simulated hardships to enable them to write soulful songs without having to actually experience the heartbreak and tragedy that usually feeds that kind of

AI is here to stay, and is gunning for every one of our jobs. White collar jobs, that is, in the broader category of "indoor work, no heavy lifting" kinds of employment. The jobs especially at risk are the ones

How do we define "success" in the bluegrass music business? We certainly can't do it by the standards used in the mass market music world, where success is considered to have been achieved when you own your own airplane and

If you're playing bluegrass music professionally, or even semi-professionally, at some point you're going to have to endure that dreaded pre-hiring ritual called the audition.  Mind you I don't mean to assume that everyone will go through the process of being

It's always exciting when new research sheds some light on the mysterious origins of some of the songs we sing, and the stories behind them. I was particularly thrilled, then, when a number of "prequels" to some of our beloved

I've discussed the issue of CD sales here in the past. Disregard whatever I may have said before because there have been some important new developments on that front. Well, one, mainly: people really aren't buying the things.  I'm exaggerating a

It's time for the annual bluegrass quiz, which fills some readers with excitement, others with dread, and still others with the urge to ignore it and move on to one of Bluegrass Today's other top stories: "Oral Surgery Postponed For