by robin | May 3, 2021 | Welcome Column
I’ve been criticized for not taking Bluegrass seriously and disrespecting the music because good bluegrass music makes me want to dance. It’s fun music. Not just fun, it’s also funny. Bluegrass has a well-established sense of humor. To prove it, I asked some of...
by robin | Apr 23, 2021 | Welcome Column
“The CBA has been a thrill ride for me… I’m grateful to the CBA for the help raising my kids, taking me seriously in a leadership position, and turning the Grass Valley nights into magic.” (Mark Varner, Facebook, April 19, 2021) I’ve recently been recruited to...
by robin | Apr 20, 2021 | Welcome Column
When I discovered bluegrass music back in the mid-1960s I was puzzled by the contrast between the instruments used by the majority of bluegrass musicians and the folksy origins of ‘mountain music’ as it was often called. Impoverished hill farmers and miners couldn’t...
by robin | Apr 16, 2021 | Welcome Column
Bluegrass fans have heard about Alex Leach long before his hit single “Mountain Heartache” became a jam standard in the blink of an eye. Becoming a DJ at the age of 9 in East Tennessee at WDVX, Alex began his musical career behind the scenes and not on the stage. Of...
by robin | Apr 15, 2021 | Welcome Column
A couple of years back your CBA board established a Communications Strategy Committee to, among other things, review the website and suggest improvements. The website had been developed some two decades ago, and though it had been revised and patched up over the...
by Christine | Apr 8, 2021 | Welcome Column
Well, then… Urrmm, now. I´ll begin at the beginnin´. [From The Quiet Man 1952.] I met Bert Daniel in the summer of 1990 when Bert, his first cousin Wilson Cooper and I packed in to my Chevy S-10 pickup which had a bench seat behind the front seats and drove from...
by Christine | Nov 2, 2013 | Welcome Column
I am honored to announce that I will be a guitar teacher at the Great 48 Jam in Bakersfield, California, so I thought I would take this time to talk about my teaching philosophy. In my earlier years, I was a student at the CBA Music Camp, and later I was a teacher’s...
by Christine | Feb 12, 2014 | Welcome Column
I have said many times, one of the appeals of bluegrass music is the stories, and there are many recurring themes, some of which I have outlined in previous columns. One of the most touching recurring themes that have touched me over the years is the love of the home...
by Christine | Apr 17, 2012 | General News
CBA held two old-time campouts in Boonville in 2009 and 2010 but none in 2011. When the board appointed me Old-Time Music Coordinator late last year, one of my tasks was to look for a new location. I received a hot tip about Lake Sonoma and got in touch with Park...
by Christine | Apr 7, 2021 | Welcome Column
(Editor’s: One of Bruce’s from the archives) A few years ago, I attended a lecture where the speaker described the effects of the hormones serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin. His subject was actually the modern phenomenon of tech dependency – especially smart...
