Country Music Blog: On Tour

The first time I Googled "Coachella Festival," I was surprised to see we would be playing alongside Portishead. Only later did I realize we were playing the "Country Coachella," better known as Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif. And to be honest, I was happier because it meant I would get to see The Judds. This may surprise some of you, but as a kid, my brother and I would listen to those records every weekend. Looking at the line-up, everything else was secondary -- Earl Scruggs, Sam Bush, Riders in the Sky. Had any of them recorded "Grandpa"? Or "River Of Time"? I don't think so...

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Though some folks may resent the fact, it's pretty hard to argue that the center for bluegrass these days is anywhere but Nashville. Music City's full of bluegrass musicians, from long-timers like Roland White, who arrived back in the ‘60s, to more recent arrivals like the Infamous Stringdusters' Travis Book and NewFound Road fiddler Brandon Godman. Because they share a common songbook, it's easy for the line between music-making and socializing to get blurry, or even disappear altogether -- and of course, once you're making music together, you might as well find an audience for it. Fortunately for the city's pickers, the world famous Station Inn stands ready to serve one up.

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One thing is for sure -- traveling on the road is never boring. There's always an adventure just ahead. After performing to a sold out venue in Farmington Hills, Mich., we started towards the Canadian border at Port Huron. Just before reaching the border, traffic came to a stand still, due to a toxic waste spill on the interstate. Our driver, Yogi, quickly got on the CB to find out how long the wait could be. They were saying eight hours or more. Yogi positioned the bus to cross the grassy median, after closely checking the firmness, to see if we could cross. He flattened out the gas pedal and didn't let up till we made the U-turn back onto the pavement. It was a rough ride, but we were moving once again and on our way to Detroit to cross the border into Canada.

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Bluegrass in the U.S. is barely a curiosity anymore, not since O Brother. Not so here in Germany. A few stalwart supporters and curious music lovers are enough to make touring viable, but it's a lot like being in a traveling freak show. You get up on stage and play, some nights you get wild applause and a double encore. Other nights, blank stares. Like Jeremy says, "They looked like they were being milked." Read more...

Like a lot of people, I couldn't get a good seat at Stagecoach festival this year because I didn't buy a VIP seat. (In fact, I didn't realize there would be VIP seats.) So I spent most of the weekend milling around behind the throng of lawn chairs and blankets and wrote about the festival mostly from what I saw on the big screens. That's OK, too. At least I didn't have to walk as far to the barbecue contest. And I could easily hear music from the Eagles, John Fogerty, the Judds, Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood and more.

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After about a decade of taking concert photos, I finally invested in a nice zoom lens about three years ago. It pretty much changed my life. No longer did I come home with shot after shot of a tiny artist on a big ugly stage. That lens gave me the power to get tighter than tight on their faces. And what I discovered is that while you can certainly get extreme close-ups of the artists singing, you can also zoom in on everything else. And by everything else, I mean the tattoos that grace their skin.

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Is there a better way to celebrate International Bluegrass Month than by getting really international? None that I can think of, which is one reason I'm happy to be winging my way across the Atlantic to spend two weeks on tour with Sally Jones. It's a cool gig on its own, but it's also a great way to check out the European bluegrass scene during its busiest month -- and to see some good friends and neighbors along the way, since we'll be crossing paths with the likes of Tim O'Brien and the Infamous Stringdusters.Of course, if you haven't already made plans to visit the Continent during May, it's probably a little late. Fortunately, thanks to two recent releases, you can get a couple of good tastes of European bluegrass anyhow.

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It's 10 a.m. in Nashville, it's 5 p.m. in Stuttgart. I keep telling myself that it's evening, but it feels like I've been up since 6 a.m. yesterday. Maybe it's because I have. You try to sleep on the plane. You think that if you just sleep on the overnight flight, when the sun rises at 1 a.m. your time, you can pretend that it's 8 a.m. It doesn't work. I got on a plane at 11 this morning (yesterday morning, I can't tell the difference) and I finally crawled out of the van at 2 p.m. this afternoon. Subtract the 6 hours I lost in the air and I'm still traveling 21 hours straight. They say the jetlag is easier heading west to east. I haven't experienced heading east to west, but if it's worse than this, I'm not interested. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I don't have to worry about that for another 34 days when the Infamous Stringdusters take our trip back across the pond.

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Last week's Billboard magazine had a story about concert security. Yes, those pesky windbreaker-wearing guys who stand between you and say, Brad Paisley. And while they do get in the way of potential autographs and hand shakes, they really are there to make concerts safer. Yet this article paints a picture of budget tightening and staff cutting. That scares me.

Have you been to a country concert, or worse, an all-day festival lately? The crowds come rowdy and ready to party. By the time the headliner takes the stage, there is a lot of pent up energy, often fueled by long neck beers and $15 margaritas. And that buzz apparently gives those fans permission to stand up on flimsy folding chairs, dance with the unwilling, and shout along to the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

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Festival season has started in full force, and our conditioning for outdoor venues, coupled with multiple consecutive dates, has begun. Our weekend started with our departure from Nashville to Ladysmith, Va. Though rain had pounded the festival grounds just days before, it turned into a perfect sunny day. We performed two shows, our last being the festival closer, before we boarded the Martha White Bluegrass Express, en route to Merlefest in Wilkesboro, N.C. Merlefest is completely different than any other venue we ever play, and even more so this year. Read more...