by Christine | May 6, 2017 | Welcome Column
(Editor’s Note: We’ve not prevailed upon Jon as much as we’d like to contribute pieces for our daily Welcome column. This one has always been one of my favorites of all Welcomes every posted here. Oh, to have been a...
by Christine | Sep 9, 2007 | Welcome Column
Jimmy Martin’s wedding was a dream come true. For me, I mean. I can’t speak for Jimmy or his lovely young bride Theresa, but I was beside myself with excitement, thrilled just to be invited. Well, not “invited” really, since the wedding was a scheduled on-stage event...
by Christine | Dec 15, 2012 | Welcome Column
(In the key of B-flat-diminished-major-7th, capo 10) Dashing through the trees With a banjo in my hand Through the cool night breeze Yonder towards a jam! Hot mandos and jug bands Guitarists by the tents Dobros by the hot dog stand The music never ends! Jingle bells,...
by Christine | Nov 9, 2007 | Welcome Column
This is the story of Joe the Goat and how he helped me reevaluate the rhythm of my daily life. The story begins this past summer, the very Saturday morning I was to leave for Grass Valley and our 32nd annual Fathers Day Festival. It so happens that one entire wall of...
by Christine | Aug 30, 2008 | Welcome Column
Time goes by so damned fast. It was seven years ago that Lynn and I drove one Sunday afternoon to Mt. Ranch and picked out two tiny Boar Goat kids from about the two dozen that were available. On the drive back we named them—the smaller, darker one we named Ted after...
by Christine | Sep 6, 2003 | Welcome Column
Larry Sparks has always been one of my favorite bluegrass singers, and his “John Deere Tractor” album, one of my most played. For twenty years now, that one particular song, about a lonely dirt farmer unlucky in love with only his tractor to count on, has sent chills...
by Christine | Apr 20, 2020 | Welcome Column
The music world lost a great treasure a couple of weeks ago when John Prine succumbed to the effects of the new corona virus. Our bluegrass community is feeling the effects perhaps as much as anybody even though Prine was anything but a bluegrass musician. He was...
by Christine | Mar 24, 2010 | Welcome Column
Folks, there ain’t no job that looks so easy as marketing. How hard can it be to do some ads? Put a logo on a billboard? Create a pithy campaign with a simple message (“Think different.”)? How do you judge a good marketing person? I know the answer to that one: if you...
by Christine | Jan 11, 2018 | Welcome Column
In just eight short years the GREAT 48 Jam in Bakersfield has become our largest event after the Fathers Day Festival. The jam starts today, Thursday, and runs through the weekend, and brings equal numbers (in the hundreds) of Southern California and Northern...
by Christine | Jul 11, 2016 | Welcome Column
With the death of Ralph Stanley still leaving the entire bluegrass community in mourning, the time was perfect for the new Junior Sisk and Rambler Choice album “Poor Boys Pleasure”. Since bursting onto the scene with Wyatt Rice, Junior Sisk has been a pillar of the...
