No, not the great Buck Owens song we all know and love. We’re talking about the great Reno & Smiley album we all know and love!
We always like to get started with some bluegrass of the vintage variety. Got to build on a strong foundation. So a track from said classic, Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys, Jimmy Martin, and John Hartford will get things off to a real good start.

Plenty of recent releases will keep things hoppin’, too. The Grascals cover Elvis. Bobby Osbourne & Rocky Top X-Press take us right on back to the mountains. And Larry Keel & Natural Bridge absolutely burn it down with an instrumental called “Fishing Reel” from their new one.
Wishing we had a line in the water just thinking about it.

Had a little mopping up to do after last week’s Mother’s Day show because so many of you were kind enough to hit that “email us” button on the ol’ homepage here and say, “Hey, you forgot…” And buddy, we did forget some good ones! Lou Reid & Carolina, Big Medicine, and a track from that new “Musicians Against Childhood Cancer: Life Goes On” project that features the vocal talents of Dudley Connell, James King, and Russell Moore will carry the mom love well over into the week after.

And that ain’t even half of what all we have in store, friends. Grassy goodness galore. A couple of listener requests for local artists Bluetown and Tim Grimm and a good set of bluegrass gospel to bring it on home will be part of the deal, too.

Doyle, JD, & Jimmy

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!
The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

…no forgetting Mommy’s Day ’round here!

Boy I’ll tell you, if there’s one topic that makes it into more bluegrass songs than any other, mother is sure in the running. Right alongside equally relevant subject matter such as loneliness, murder, the old home place, the road that never ends, and coon dogs. You are sure enough in good company mom!

In all the years “Fields of Bluegrass” has been on the air our approach to this most sacrosanct of subjects has been to spin a bunch of them pitiful, mournful, “Mama’s  up yonder in heaven a-waiting” type numbers and then put it out there that there’s just one more shopping day until you-know-what. No hidden agendas here, pretty all out there indeed.

Larry Sparks will share one in which mama is the first person he writes when life in the big city isn’t all he’d hoped it would be. Newfound Road sings one from the perspective of a daddy telling his motherless little girl what her mommy was like. Lynn Morris sings one written by the great Hazel Dickens about letting your child leave the poverty she was born into for the hope of a better life elsewhere.
Yup, on a ‘pitiful scale’ of 1-10 we’re looking at about a 9.3 this time around, friends.
Any buddy have an ‘in’ with the folks that make Kleenex so we can look into an endorsement deal?

Other artists in the program include Reno & Smiley, Jesse Brock, Flatt & Scruggs, David Grisman, Del McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, IIIrd Tyme Out, Grasstowne, The Stanley Brothers, The Dry Branch Fire Squad and more. And lest we lose sight of the fact that grandmothers are mommies too, Randy Kohrs will provide a fine number that’ll serve to remind us.

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!
The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

I’ve been on a real instrumental kick at home here lately and you’d better know a little bit of that is going to carry right on over into the program this week.

That new Kenny Smith album “Return” has a lot to do with that. Kenny recorded this collection of new material on vintage guitars, and man is it good.
Jimmy Gaudreau & Moondi Klein have a new one on the Rebel label that is top notch and well worth checking out, too.
And if you haven’t heard Jim Hurst‘s new “Intrepid” project…whoa!
And buddy, The Lonesome River Band might even lay a fresh rendition of “Angeline The Baker” on us before all is (un)said and done.

After those pickers boldly go where no pickers have gone before, it’s a set featuring songs about mills. Grist Mills, textile mills, that kind of thing. The Dillards, The Dry Branch Fire Squad, and Earl Taylor, Jim McCall & The Stoney Mountain Boys should be able to help us out with that.

And speaking of mountains, who better to sing us a couple about the beautiful Blue Ridge than Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs and Jimmy Martin & The Sunny Mountain Boys? We’ll round things right on out with artists such as The Osborne Brothers, IIIrd Tyme Out, Larry Keel & Natural Bridge, Del McCoury, Junior Sisk, and that should take us right on into a nice set of bluegrass gospel to close the program.

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!
The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

J.D. Crowe at Bean Blossom

I’m sure most of you have heard. The legendary J.D. Crowe is retiring after this year. That’s right, when the rest of the dates on his performance calendar are filled one of the greatest banjo players in bluegrass music history, who turns 75 later this year, will be taking it easy and staying close to home.

We’ll get the show started with a classic from an album that has come to mean a whole lot to us bluegrass fans, the iconic 1975 release “J.D. Crowe & The New South.”

And before you go getting all sad and waxin’ nostalgic on us, please allow me to point out that J.D. and his band are scheduled to perform at our favorite music park at both the June festival and Uncle Pen Days in September, and he’ll be there two days at each!
Festival information and a complete schedule on the official Bean Blossom website: http://beanblossom.us/

We’re well into spring now and baseball season is in full swing. That’s why we decided we might want to have us a baseball set of music with songs by Doc & Merle Watson, Sam Bush, and Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen. Us bluegrass history geeks well know that Bill Monroe was a big fan of the game and often hired musicians for his band that could not only play, but play! Back in the days when tent shows were popular, Bill and his Bluegrass Boys would play an exhibition game with the local team before the show that night.

We have a whole lot of great new releases to share tonight, and that includes songs from The Grascals, Charlie Sizemore, Kenny Smith, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, and The Steep Canyon Rangers. And the gospel set that will close the show will begin with a wonderful rendition of “I’m Using My Bible For A Roadmap,” performed by our friend and central Indiana bluegrass scene stalwart Jessie Perdue. Sad to report that Jessie left us on April 19th, but all the memories we made with him, especially at Bean Blossom, will certainly live on.

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!
The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

Gospel songs have been a part of bluegrass music since the original 1946 bluegrass band line-up of Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Chubby Wise, and Howard Watts laid the template for this uniquely American form. Songs that fall into the spirituals, hymns and gospel quartets, trios, and duets categories have all been a vital component of our music right up to the present day.

We’ll get started with one of my all-time favorite performers in any genre, The Stanley Brothers. Listening to a Pee Wee King and J.L Franks composition called “My Main Trial Is Yet To Come” performed by The Stanleys left me reflecting on the fact that you can preach at me all day, but it’s the music that speaks to me and leaves me feeling uplifted and edified as only music can.
And that isn’t the only vintage material in tonight’s program, no sir. Flatt & Scruggs, Reno & Smiley, The Dry Branch Fire Squad, and Tony Rice all contribute decades-old favorites. We’ll even include local legends The Jewell Family performing “He’s My Guide.”

Rest assured, we have an abundance of new releases to share as well! We’ll hear fresh tracks from The Grascals, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Jim Hurst, Dailey & Vincent, The Gibson Brothers, and more. And as if that weren’t enough, Kenny & Amanda Smith are joined on stage by Rhonda Vincent on a live gospel track from that new Musician’s Against Childhood Cancer “Life Goes On” 2-CD set now available on the Rural Rhythm label.

100% of the net proceeds from the sale of the album (approx. $4 of every CD sold) benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, too.  Here’s a link from the label’s site that includes the track listing for the 39 songs included on the project:
http://ruralrhythm.com/web/?p=2672

The Musicians Against Childhood Cancer Stage

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!
The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

It’s true.
In this week’s program, if you aren’t hearing a vintage favorite, such as Red Allen & The Kentuckians singing “Live and Let Live” way back in the day, we’ll be sharing a great new release from a band such as The Spinney Brothers; or one from that newly-released Grascals album.

And of course we’ll work in at least one from Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, because we’re looking forward to their FREE April 15th appearance at Northminster Presbyterian in Broadripple in a big ol’ way!

This September The Fields of Bluegrass Radio Hour will be celebrating it’s eleventh anniversary, and for the first time we won’t have an all gospel show going for Easter weekend. Why, you ask? Well, our Earl Scruggs tribute preempted our already prepared program, that’s why!
Not to worry, we’ll put together a bluegrass gospel extravaganza and air it later this month. Promise.

Happy Easter!

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!
The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

This week on The Fields of Bluegrass Radio Hour we’ll pay tribute to the legendary Earl Scruggs.
The man that joined forces with Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt, Howard Watts, and Chubby Wise to lay the template for the music we hold dear left us on Wednesday at age 88. His was a good, long life; the scope of his career truly amazing.
Let’s celebrate his life with just as much of his music as we can fit into an hour!

We’ll get started with the first song that a very young Earl recorded as a member of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. The date was September 16th, 1946 when the band went into Columbia Records studios in Chicago and “Heavy Traffic Ahead” was the first track they laid down in a session that also yielded “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Why Did You Wander,” “Toy Heart,” and “Mansions For Me,” among others.

Earl Scruggs’ approach to the 3-finger style caused quite a stir back in the day, to put it mildly. And all these years later, if you don’t have Scruggs-style banjo in your band, it ain’t really bluegrass, is it? The man transformed the way people worldwide regard the instrument. He inspired countless multitudes to take up the ol’ 5-string, and that’s as big a part of the legacy he leaves behind as anything. Just ask your favorite banjo player out there performing today, be it Sammy Shelor, Pete Wernick, or Béla Fleck, and chances are it was the same electricity we all felt the first time Earl’s playing grabbed us that inspired them to take up the instrument. Real safe bet, that!

And, as if that weren’t enough, his mastery of Mother Maybelle Carter-style guitar is another component of Earl’s music too often overlooked…but wait, there’s more! The man was a gospel singer the equal of any in the finest Southern traditional quartet. We’ll be getting a taste of those two facets of Earl’s overwhelming talents in the gospel set that will close the program too, rest assured.

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!
The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

All Spring. All Birds.
That’s the theme.
The Music?
Well, fiddles. Banjers. Mandolins. The whole nine.
You know, bluegrass and old-time mountain music.

No bluegrass artist performed more songs on the subject of the winged ones than The Stanley Brothers. Later Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys added quite a few to their repertoire over the years as well, you’d better know it. We’ll squeeze a Don Reno & Benny Martin collaboration in there that was recorded some time ago too, if time allows.

So, this week, no matter who is singing them, they’re going to be about birds. Redbirds, bluebirds, thrush, white doves, mourning doves, blackbirds and crows of course, and the Eastern Whippoorwill (Caprimulgus vociferus).
Even the cuckoo bird makes an appearance, in the form of an old-timey instrumental from Norman Blake.

Offerings from the modern era include Donna Hughes, Cadillac Sky, King Wilkie, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Blue Highway, The Wilders, The Grascals, Steve Martin, Tim O’Brien, Rowan & Rice, Reeltime Travelers, Don Rigsby, Laurie Lewis, and Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper.

Michael Cleveland and his band Flamekeeper will be at Northminster Presbyterian in Indianapolis on Sunday, April 15 | 4:00 p.m.
Info: http://www.northminster-indy.org 

…and you’d better know that ain’t all!
Real nice gospel set will take us on out with songs about flying away and great speckled birds.

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!  The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

The original line-up of Béla Fleck & The Flecktones will be at Clowes Memorial Hall on The Butler University Campus the end of this month. Victor Wooton, Futureman, and Howard Levy will provide a framework upon which the banjo player’s banjo player can stretch the very limits of what’d you’d expect from the ol’ 5-string with everything from classical and jazz to bluegrass and African music to electric blues and Eastern European folk dances.
Additional info: http://www.cloweshall.org/

Now, we won’t be playing all that there various and sundry stuff on this here straight-up, no chaser bluegrass radio show of ours of course, but after getting things started with a good Tony Rice number we will go right into a couple that Béla did with both John Hartford and Earl Scruggs some years ago.  And that material will not offend our delicate bluegrass sensibilities. Rest assured.

Some of the recent releases we’re anxious to share with you this week come from The Spinney Brothers, IIIrd Tyme Out, Dailey & Vincent, Chris Jones, Delia Low, Carolina Road, Jackstraw, and Jim Hurst‘s new “Intrepid” project. Jim pays tribute to one of his idols with a cover of Jerry Reed‘s “Lock On Me,” and MAN does that thing have an infectious groove! Reed would have celebrated his 75th birthday on March 20th, so it was downright timely, too.

Any old favorites, you ask? You’d better know it, buddy. One of the grassiest things The David Grisman Quintet ever did, a Rhonda Vincent number done by the young lady in question some years ago, and an extra tasty version of “White Dove” from Jimmy Martin all fit the category quite nicely, thank you very much.

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!  The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.

Ol’ Charlie knows. Great banjo music nourishes the soul, causes the spirit to soar, and provides a path to true happiness. And as if that weren’t enough, it’s also an effective means of checking for loose fillings without having to bother the dentist.

I know. Good grief.

Tickled to report that we’ll be sharing some exciting new releases this week. Another track from that new “Chronology” project from The Lonesome River Band will be right at the top of the program. And Chris Jones & The Night Drivers new collection on Rebel Records “Lost Souls & Free Spirits: The Rebel Collection Old & New,” as the title implies, contains both old favorites and new material.

Now, you ain’t sitting there wondering where the old gravy is, are you?  Fear not! Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and The Seldom Scene will take us on a journey through the past with the latter providing  one of several coal mining numbers, and that includes one from Indianapolis’ own Bluetown, too.

And that ain’t all! An important announcement about an upcoming Indianapolis appearance from Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, more new releases, more classics, more from the locals, and a real nice set of bluegrass gospel to close the program.

Join us at 9PM Eastern if you’re in “The Land of Bean Blossom.” You’ll find us at 88.7 on your FM dial, right smack dab in the middle of “Friday Night Folk” programming on WICR.

Not in Indy? Not a problem!  The current show is posted on the player at the right side of this very page and updates once a week, friends.