The Foundation for Bluegrass Music will distribute $20,000 in funds to charitable public programs in 2011. These include youth-focused educational efforts, a film project and celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bill Monroe -- the “father of bluegrass music.” The six grant recipients were selected from among more than two-dozen applicants. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Carlton Haney, who launched the first multi-day bluegrass music festival with camping, the second prominent magazine focused on the genre, and served as a booking agent for Bill Monroe and others, died on March 16 at a hospital in Greensburg, North Carolina, following a stroke earlier in the month. He was 82. [To read the full article, click on the headline.]
Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien has been making waves in bluegrass, country, folk and roots music circles for some time. His latest release, Chicken & Egg, is currently the #1 album on the Roots Music Report Folk Radio Chart (which is posted in the Acoustic Radio Waves section on AcousticMusicScene.com). And O’Brien is among the nominees for International Bluegrass Music Association‘s Male Vocalist of the Year, one of the awards and honors to be presented by the IBMA on Sept. 30 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN. A two-time past recipient of that honor, O’Brien also has previously been recognized by the IBMA for Album of the Year and Song of the Year and received a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album (Fiddler’s Green) in 2005. The 56-year-old West Virginia native, a co-founder and lead vocalist for Hot Rize and Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, has released 13 solo albums and also has collaborated with his sister, Mollie. Notable artists such as Dierks Bentley, Garth Brooks, Dixie Chicks, Kathy Mattea, New Grass Revival and the Seldom Scene also have recorded his songs. Kathy Sands-Boehmer posed a few questions to O’Brien recently. [To read Kathy's Quick Q & A with Tim O'Brien, click on the headline.]
Bluegrass pioneer Lester Flatt, who died in 1979, is best known for having been a lead singer and guitarist with Bill Monroe back in the 1940s and for the two decades he spent with banjoist and fellow Bluegrass Boys alum Earl Scruggs as Flatt and Scruggs – a partnership that produced such bluegrass classics as “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” The U.S. House of Representatives, on Jan. 26, agreed to a sense resolution recognizing Flatt’s invaluable contribution to American art and the indelible legacy he left on bluegrass music. [To see the full text of the resolution, click on the headline.]
Dailey & Vincent retained the title of Entertainers of the Year when the 20th Annual International Bluegrass Music Awards were presented on Thursday, October 1, at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The duo also was named Vocal Group of the Year. [To read the entire article and learn who all the winners are, click on the headline.]
