Bluegrass: The Next Swing?

I've been getting into bluegrass music over the last year or two and really loving it. I guess my attraction has alot to do with how "organic" it is. It's not important for it to be performed or engineered perfectly. It's life in all it's perfect flaws and honesty. Now it seems like it's starting to get popular, with the score from "Brother, Where Art Thou", a slew of TV ads for compilation CDs, and the PBS special I'm watching right now. So naturally, it's probably about to go through it's next 15 minutes of fame, just like swing did a couple of years ago, with the Squirrel Nut Zippers and stuff like that, which in turn means it's going to start to suck because of the cash to be made from producing it in quantity. Before you know it, "Bluesgrass 2002" will be the next Charlotte dance club. So please, for the sake of my future listening pleasure, please resist and reject Bluegrass with all your might and write your congressman (or Tipper Gore) with harsh criticism of the values it promotes. Thanks.

 

I love bluegrass music. It is the real deal and will always remain so. just hit the fesitval circuit - big ones ( Merlefest end of April in Wilkesboro) 0r the hundreds of small ones that are almost every weekend from spring to fall across NC.

camp out - forget the "shows" - just hang out around the campsites at night and watch the wide array of people in the jam sessions.

good people good music and good times.

 

Thanks, that's a great idea. I've been wanting to take the family camping and that would probably be a great atmosphere.

 

Bluegrass cycles thorugh a popularity cycle about every 20 years like folk. It is best when forgotten by the mainstream but them folks seem to eat better when it's popular. As woss said go to the little shows they're usually good, The ones on sat evening during the summer in Franklin are always a good reason to spend a day in the mountains. Carolina Smokehouse in Cashiers has music every Friday and Sat during the season which means when they have the windows open on the building. Actually if you go to the mountains on a weekend during the summer hits hard not to bump into people picking sometime during the day.

 

Bluegrass simply rocks....

 

that's what they were playing over at sly's b-day party -- at mojo's. that was my first exposure to it. very fun.

 

Wossa- Is it "Fiddles Grove" your talking about? When I was at Guilford, we would go up some time in the spring for the fiddlers convention. It was a great road trip. I remember beer and music but not many kids.

What was that bar off Sugar Creek that was a farm equipment store turned improv-music place? Do they have bluegrass playin' there?

 

Man, you're thinking of FiddleR'S Grove Campground, which is in metropolitain UNion Grove NC, just a stone's thropw from the (in)famous Burger Barn and S & S Cafe (now Sunshine's Cafe at the Grove). Harper Van Hoy (or Pierce, I always get those two mixed up, buecause they both own campgrounds about a mile and a hlaf apart and are cousins--either way, the one who own's Fiddler's Grove) stopped his fiddler's conventions after the FBI and DEA started showing up a week before the convention started just to get ready. And you wonder why there weren't a lot of kids.

 

Puckett's Farm Equipment. I've been there once and thought it was great. I just wish they served whiskey.