Bluegrass is such an underrated genre. My favorite band is the Lewis family, partly out of childhood nostalgia. Parents listened to them all the time in our minivan tape player. This is one of my favorite songs by them:
C: Do you have any fond memories of playing with Jerry Garcia from years past?
V: A lot of them. He was a guy who just loved to play, so that just fits in with the rest of us musicians. He wanted to play all the time and so did we. We became friends before I ever knew who he was really. Me and Jerry Garcia as a person became friends before I knew who he was playing with. We made our way out to San Francisco and then I saw this billboard sign that looked like Jerry. I said, “hey Jerry, that looks like you,” and everybody started laughin’. They didn’t know that I didn’t know who he was. They got a kick out of that. That’s one of the funniest things that happened. We had a lot of fun, a lot of fun.
Legend has it, it was New Years Eve and Weir was with a buddy looking for a bar that would let them in underage when they stumbled across Jerry Garcia. Garcia forgot it was New Years Eve and had been waiting for a student to come by and was playing his banjo on his porch to pass the time. Weir was so mesmerized by him that he stopped looking for a bar and hung out with Jerry. The rest is history
Christian's "Ravine Palace" album from a few years ago is an awesome piece of work. Jerry plays on it, alongside some other modern greats like Andrew Marlin and Eli West.
Many Bluegrass websites are labors of love created by musicians that are not experts in computing and web design. If you were to tell them that they are violating the ISO 8601 time standard, they would have no idea of what ISO 8601 was. Just be glad that they are adding more Bluegrass to the web.
Mind you, there are high quality Bluegrass websites around. For example, take a look at the California Bluegrass Association website.
I got to see Trampled by Turtles play last weekend. The experience of watching them jam at the end of each song - six musicians giving it 110% and perfectly in sync - is something I’ll never forget.
I hope you go see more bluegrass music. You can get this experience just about as often as you like nowadays - lots of great bands have amazing improvisational skills, and they use them!
What's the easiest way to play these songs? Short of downloading each individual track, is there an easy means to play/stream these songs? Does VLC or equivalent play these easily? Hoping to just give it an artist or album root path and it just picks up the songs in order to play from there.
For fans of Bela Fleck and "Newgrass" (progressive/Fusion BlueGrass) music, I recommend any show from the band "Strength in Numbers," a 1980s supergroup featuring a young and pre-Flecktones Béla Fleck, Mark O'Connor, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and Edgar Meyer. Compositionally strong, and featuring a few early song versions of what would be recorded on the first Flecktones CD release.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 95.5 ms ] threadHis songs slam. Trying to put together a bluegrass tribute set of his music for early next year.
He’s not taper friendly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQzHObcbMvw
Sound it's great but it's listenable
https://youtube.com/watch?v=hQ47acvJhFg
C: Do you have any fond memories of playing with Jerry Garcia from years past?
V: A lot of them. He was a guy who just loved to play, so that just fits in with the rest of us musicians. He wanted to play all the time and so did we. We became friends before I ever knew who he was really. Me and Jerry Garcia as a person became friends before I knew who he was playing with. We made our way out to San Francisco and then I saw this billboard sign that looked like Jerry. I said, “hey Jerry, that looks like you,” and everybody started laughin’. They didn’t know that I didn’t know who he was. They got a kick out of that. That’s one of the funniest things that happened. We had a lot of fun, a lot of fun.
https://jambands.com/features/2000/03/15/vassar-clements-pro...
Love Redneck Jazz, and his playing on Bela Fleck’s Bluegrass Sessions Vol 2. “Valley of the Rogue” is such a dope tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3_rBQWMNao
I think it’s his best. Drive is a classic but Bluegrass Sessions has a vision.
Legend has it, it was New Years Eve and Weir was with a buddy looking for a bar that would let them in underage when they stumbled across Jerry Garcia. Garcia forgot it was New Years Eve and had been waiting for a student to come by and was playing his banjo on his porch to pass the time. Weir was so mesmerized by him that he stopped looking for a bar and hung out with Jerry. The rest is history
Great to see all the Bill Monroe bootlegs.
Definitely gonna give a few of these Bill Keith live shows a spin. Keith was a genius of the banjo and is criminally underappreciated.
I don’t think there’d be a Bela Fleck without Bill Keith.
Mind you, there are high quality Bluegrass websites around. For example, take a look at the California Bluegrass Association website.
https://californiabluegrass.org/
Or the IBMA website.
https://ibma.org/
Maybe this is a fair time to persuade there is an ethos of hillbilly hacker that prioritizes function over form.
https://gdarchive.net/Public/Bluegrass/contents.htm