The Venue

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…

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…

Asheville, North Carolina is located deep in the heart of bluegrass country.  There has been a long tradition of bluegrass music in that area and many of the heroes of bluegrass music have called, or still call, Asheville home.  However, the guy who is responsible for teaching bluegrass at the college level in Asheville started…

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…

As John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers were to British rock guitar, Muddy Waters was to electric blues, and Miles Davis was to modern Jazz, West Virginia’s Lonesome Pine Fiddlers (LPF) were to bluegrass music. The group was a training ground, a triple A ball team if you will, for a genre that has grown exponentially since its beginnings…

If you take an ailing bass fiddle into Bob Beerman’s shop for repairs, you feel as if you are entering an operating room. The instrument is gently laid upon a table in the back room then one employee examines the patient while another hovers with a clipboard jotting down its diagnosis. Beerman is the veteran…