February 9th-15th: A Question For You All (and more stuff I’ve been working on!)
Before I begin anything in this week’s post…HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!! Thank you so much to all my musical families, friends, and fans who have been supporting me in every way! I’m positive I couldn’t have done what Ive already accomplished without you!! Remember-Valentines Day doesn’t have to be for folks who are in a relationship. Tell a friend you love them, tell your dog, you co-worker, your enemies, someone who looks lonely, someone who IS lonely- get it? Take the love, and pass it on, cause that’s what the day is all about.
Now, music was really exciting this last weekend, as something happened with the booking, but it turned out to be magical! Last Friday, Missing Links Brewery in Meridian, PA hosted the swing-grass group Midnight Rooster, and the crowd was phenomenal!! It was also lightly snowing outside which made it very pretty, but unfortunate for one lady who got her truck stuck in the pond (she ended up being okay, which made the whole situation hilarious!) Then, that coming Sunday, The hillbilly trio The Millbillys got booked there, and it was National Pizza Day! (Missing Links has some delicious pizza if you’re wondering why I brought this up.) Out of pure amazingness, Sunday’s crowd was also huge! So many people stayed, and some came back from Friday’s gig to see the show-really cool! Finally, Monday’s show was at The North Country Brewery with The Millbillys again, and we must have wore everybody out, because the bar area was kind of light, but we still had a few people stop and listen. It was a really great stretch of shows, and I’m thankful for everyone who stopped over and struck up a conversation! There’s one more opportunity to catch me playing, and that is TONIGHT, at THE HARMONY INN from 7-10 PM with THE WELL STRUNG BAND featuring Mr. COREY WOOD on banjo! It’s gonna be a ball!! Hope to see you there!!
On to my question to you all!!
This week, I had the pleasure of submitting a song to The Podunk Bluegrass Songwriting Competition in August!! Podunk is a festival in Connecticut, and from the looks of the website, it must be a beautiful venue! I found out about it through an email I got from the thread of a friend of mine. The top 3 winners of the contest would each get a 10 minute slot at the next year’s festival, along with tickets and some other great prizes. However, as I looked through the rules and regulations, I noticed something that I’d never seen before-there was a paragraph describing and defining what bluegrass music was. I read it a couple times, and before I even started to fill out any forms, I thought long and hard about if I might even have a chance to win with any of the songs I would’ve considered for submission into the contest. It kinda put me off briefly, as, if you know or have listened to my music, you know that it’s not bluegrass in it’s truest form. Now, I am aware that there are some folks who are very attuned to the traditional sound of this type of music, and there are plenty of opinions about what the genre is and isn’t, what classifies the genre, etc etc etc. SO, my question is this-should festival competitions, like this one, put a definition of the genre in their rules???
Now, I need to lay some ground rules:
You can be profane-but keep it in check. I support freedom of speech, but swearing is like drinking- it’s fun at first, but if you take it too far, you just become annoying and repulsive. So don’t be the latter.
Be respectful of others‘ responses on the question, and their views. Challenge them, but don’t be an a$$hole.
I reserve the right to shut this discussion down if we all can’t play together nicely. Simple as that.
If I need to add more rules, I can do that as well.
I think that’s pretty much it! Have fun with this, and let’s learn together!! See you soon!