Anniversaries this week

• 29/1 - Leadbelly (1888) - Huddie Ledbetter, died Dec 6 1949
• 31/1 - Alan Lomax (1915) - Famed song collector and recording engineer Died 19 July 2002 aged 87
• 31/1 - C.F. Martin I (1796) - Christian Frederick Martin, Sr. was born in Markneukirchen, Germany, a major centre of high-quality violin building in the 1800s. Made a guitar as a class exercise at the end of his cabinet making apprenticeship, and just kept on making them.
• 31/1 - Becky Buller (1979) - Songwriter, fiddler, singer with Valerie Smith and Liberty Pike
• 31/1 - Lynwood Lunsford (1962)
• 1/2 - Del McCoury (1939) - Born Floyd Delano McCoury to parents Grover C. McCoury Sr. and Hazel Hughes McCoury
• 1/2 - David Parmley (1959)
• 1/2 - Tom Gray (1941)
• 1/2 - Jason Carter (1973)
• 1/2 - Don Everly (1937)
• 2/2 - Louise Certain (died this day in 2006) - Wife of banjo legend Earl Scruggs
• 2/2 - Keith McReynolds (died this day in 2000)
• 3/2 - Bill Monroe & Blue Grass Boys (1950) - First recording session for Decca Records
• 3/2 - "The Day The Music Died" (1959) - The anniversary of the "day the music died," the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson, The Big Bopper
• 4/2 - Jethro Burns (died this day in 1989)
• 4/2 - Tater Tate (1931)
• 4/2 - MaryE Yeomans - One of the finest writers and photographers in the whole of the bluegrass world.
• 4/2 - Steve Sparkman (1972)

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(T. Bubba Bechtol)

Video Of The Day

Today's Video is:

Rhonda Vincent & The Rage: Kentucky Borderline

Check back here tomorrow for another video.

Release of the day

Today's featured new release:

Paul Williams: Hard Working Pilgrim (Rebel)
Read a review ...

PLUS: More of the latest new CDs from Australia and overseas.

Regular visitors to this site will have noticed that updates have slowed over the last couple of years.   In fact for much of the last two years there have been no updates at all.   You could say the site has languished.    As blogs and Twitter and Facebook have emerged, the original purpose for the Bluegrass Australia site has been supplanted by more flexible, responsive ways of communicating with bluegrass fans and providers in Australia.   

 

Originally, this site was to be a resource for those interested in Bluegrass, bringing together all the news, updates, articles about bluegrass activities in Australia.    However other resources handle some of those things in much better ways than this site could ever do.   There is no point in attempting to compete - instead we want to complement the social media and blogs so that working together, we can give a much better service to people interested in bluegrass. Greg McGrath does a splendid job of bringing us all the latest bluegrass news on the Australian Bluegrass Blog, so we want to make sure we don't undermine what he's doing.

 

So we are re-purposing the site.   One of the problems with blogs and social media is that while they are responsive and fast moving, information is quickly lost as new posts push the older ones off the page.   So we want to hold the information that has a longer "shelf life" than the daily bluegrass news you'll find in the Australian Bluegrass Blog.   

 

Over the next few months you'll find many new features of this site, and some of the existing pages will disappear.   We are arranging exchange of content with some other sites,  and updating the look and feel of the site.  

 

Here's what we're offering immediately: 

[A] If you are a bona fide bluegrass organisation - a society or regular jam session or festival in Australia we have FREE web space available for you.   You can build your own pages and link them to the Bluegrass Australia site, or you can use our content management system that allows you to update your pages without needing any technical skills.   You can add any content to the site provided it's bluegrass-related and doesnt contravene anyone's copyright.

 

[B] the gig/event Calendar will be retained and enhanced.  The presentation will be redesigned to be much better for site visitors to find what they're looking for, and easier to read.  

 

[C] We're building a kind of classified ads section, so that bands can advertise their services,  musicians can look for bands,  bands can look for musicians,  we can swap/buy/sell instruments and other bluegrass-related things.

 

There are other things too - but we would love to know what YOU would like to see here.   There's no point just doing what other people are doing - we want to be doing things that no one else does.   If you have an idea for something we can include in the site that matches the requirements for the new purpose, we are eager to hear from you.   Please let us know!

Mike Kear

Webmaster, Bluegrass Australia.