The Venue
Kentucky ROMP Bluegrass Festival Celebrates 20th Year
Traveling to a “bluegrass roots and branches” music festival in Kentucky is like ordering lobster at a restaurant in Maine or gumbo in Louisiana. Expectations are high. If they don’t know bluegrass music in Owensboro, Kentucky—less than 40 miles from Bill Monroe’s birthplace—then who does? And how could an event named “ROMP” (an acronym for…
Bluegrass Friendships, Associations and Storytelling
Photo by Ed Henry When Bill Monroe reportedly said, “Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world,” he could have been describing the history of the Seven Mountains Bluegrass Association (SMBA), which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year in York County, Pennsylvania. As Monroe’s quote continues,…
Second Annual Malpass Brothers Bluegrass and Country Music Festival
Photos by Ricky Davis Smack dab between Murphy and Manteo, where Carolina clay colors the soil and the landscape can’t quite make up its mind whether to be rolling or flat, is an idyllic patch of ground where the world passes by in Jim Reevesque fashion. When the stream of traditional bands start arriving leading…
An Oasis of Roots Music and Dance in the Blue Ridge Mountains
The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of America’s great tourist attractions. The word ‘attraction’ might not be a proper description, however, as it is simply a beautiful drive on a road built almost a century ago on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains that exposes the beauty of the Appalachian Mountains, considered the second-oldest mountains…
Bluegrass in Vermont
Bennington College Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont started as a women’s college in 1932 and transitioned to a co-educational institution in 1969. One of its claims to fame is that the college was “the first to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner to the liberal arts curriculum.” As a performing art, bluegrass slowly…
Bluegrass Ensemble
Berea College Every year in July, since 2021, Bluegrass Unlimited has featured a series of articles titled “Bluegrass Goes to College” where we feature a number of college-level bluegrass music programs. If you have been following this series, you may have notice that the name Raymond McLain pops up several times. Raymond was involved with…