Bluegrass Music at Owensboro Community and Technical College
Just a stone’s throw from Rosine, Kentucky — the birthplace of Bill Monroe — Owensboro has long been known as an important landmark on the road map of bluegrass music. The International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) was born in Owensboro and the spectacular Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum and ROMP music festival both call Owensboro home. Recently the Kentucky Guitar Works opened in Owensboro, adding to the town’s allure as a destination city for bluegrass music fans. Starting this fall, Owensboro will also be a place where students over the age of sixteen can study bluegrass music at a college level. Thus, the town continues to earn its reputation as “The Bluegrass Music Capital of the World.”
The Owensboro Community and Technical College (OCTC) is one of sixteen colleges state-wide that are a part of the Kentucky Community and Technical College system. Its sister college in Hyden, Kentucky, has been running a bluegrass program for many years now and one of that school’s instructors, Scott Napier, has moved to Owensboro to start a similar curriculum here.
A Hazard native, Napier started his professional career as a bluegrass musician in 1996 and has performed with Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers, Dale Ann Bradley, Marty Raybon, and Lost and Found. In 2014, Napier accepted a full-time teaching position at Hazard Community and Technical College’s Kentucky School of Bluegrass and Traditional Music in
Hyden, Kentucky. At that college, Scott taught classes in bluegrass history, songwriting and ensemble directing. He also taught private lessons on mandolin and guitar. Additionally, he worked closely with Bobby Osborne and initiated the Bobby Osborne Mandolin Roundup in 2017, an annual one-day mandolin camp. Scott and his wife Lauren Price Napier, of the Price Sisters band, also recorded over one hundred videos with the legendary Osborne in a YouTube series titled “Tremelo Tuesdays.” Scott covered a lot of ground during his tenure at HCTC earning the rank of Associate Professor, two college degrees and four IBMA Momentum Mentor of the Year nominations.
Regarding the move to Owensboro, Scott said that after Bobby Osborne passed, he felt like it was time to move on from that institution, but he loved teaching and wanted to find a way to continue to do that kind of work. The same week that he made the decision to leave Hyden, Steve Johnson—Director of the Bluegrass Music Initiative for the city of Owensboro—called Scott and said that the college in Owensboro had been talking for several years about adding a bluegrass and traditional music studies program and thought that the time was right to start in 2024. So, the stars lined up for Napier to move to Owensboro and design their classes from the ground up. After teaching bluegrass music at a college level for nine years, Scott was excited about creating his own format.
Johnson said, “This program presents a tremendous opportunity to build out the Bluegrass Capitol connection for students around the world. OCTC is dedicated to the genre, the community and the region.
Regarding this new offering, OCTC President, Dr. Scott Williams commented, “We are so excited to have Scott Napier on board. He has revived a faculty band on campus, and although he just moved here, he has already integrated himself into the fabric of the community. His enthusiasm is catching, I think there is unlimited potential with Scott in the driver’s seat.”
The students who attend Capital Bluegrass & Traditional Music at OCTC have the opportunity to earn a two-year degree as a Professional Studio Artist (PSA). The degree prepares students for a careers as independent studio artists and business owners, designers, performers and studio technicians. There are also diploma and certificate options in bluegrass and traditional music. Students need not attend all classes in person and can enroll in classes as young as sixteen years old. Napier says that many students from all over the United States, and foreign countries, were part of his classes when he was teaching at the college in Hyden.
Even though remote classes are available, Napier is excited for the students who attend class on site in Owensboro because of all that this town has to offer. He said that in Hyden it wasn’t always easy for students to find places to perform or to find professional shows to attend. In Owensboro, with all the activity at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the ROMP festival, students will have opportunities galore. Napier said, “There is no better location for bluegrass music education.”
In addition to the music lessons, students will also have the opportunity to study audio engineering in a studio that the college is currently building with the help of Steve Chandler. Chandler, an Owensboro native—who has worked with the Beach Boys, Dolly Parton, Wynonna Judd and others—has won the IBMA’s “Engineer of the Year” award twice and is the resident sound engineer at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Chandler is designing and helping to create the studio that the students will use to record their projects.
When classes start this fall, Napier will be teaching songwriting, bluegrass history, recording 1, individual instruments, ensemble and performance. Napier’s philosophy, which he credits to Larry Sparks, is that the best way to improve as a singer, instrumentalist or performer is to get on stage and play. Scott says that he plans to have the most active band of any college. As the demand grows, he plans to add other instructors to help him with the teaching duties. He also plans on approaching the many artists who come through town each month to perform at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Woodward Theater to ask them to come over to the college for a workshop or Q & A session with the students.
As word of the new opportunity has spread throughout the spring and summer of this year, Scott says that the enrollments for the fall are continuing to roll in. He has had some local enrollments, but also some students have enrolled from Indiana and other towns in Kentucky, like Bowling Green. He also encourages high school dual enrollments. He said, “Any high-school-aged person sixteen years or older that is ready to start college classes can take our courses and earn college credits.” Additionally, he expects that some of the students who are enrolled at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green (about an hour away from Owensboro) will enroll in some of his courses to earn electives. He said, “There is a huge pool of potential students.”
Scott also emphasizes that earning college credit in order to gain a degree that will help the student to become a professional musician or engineer is not the only reason to enroll in this program. He said, “In some cases people take these classes to improve their quality of life. Learning to play music is a way to take a break from the stressors of life. Playing music is good therapy and we welcome students from 16 to 82.”
Another “feeder” into Capital Bluegrass & Traditional Music is the highly successful kids music program at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Dozens of local Owensboro kids learn how to play bluegrass instruments through that program and a huge “band” composed of these kids performs on Saturday morning at the ROMP festival every year. When they get close to college age, these kids will be able to continue the studies at their local community college.
In addition to all of the activities that Scott plans to initiate in conjunction with the college music studies, he also would like to revive the Mandolin Roundup in Owensboro. The event in Hyden was open to any-and-all mandolin players and preceded the Osborne Brothers festival. The students who attended the Roundup had the opportunity to perform on stage at the festival. Scott would like to do the same thing in Owensboro and tie it to the ROMP festival weekend.
Over the past several years in our annual “Bluegrass Goes to College” series, we have reported on over a dozen college-level bluegrass music programs that have already been established and are thriving. This new opportunity in Owensboro, with its location in the “Bluegrass Capital of the World,” and its ties to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the ROMP festival, Kentucky Guitar Works and support from the town of Owensboro is destined to excel.
