Bluegrass Beat

By Berk Bryant

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL Y’ALL.

I hope it was a good'un; you know, safe and friendly fun with a list of New Year’s resolutions. Now don’t you make a New Year’s resolution to not ever make another one. Start the year off right, mend some fences and some of those things you have been “putting off until ...” Until is here.

Good Start

Well, just before Christmas I got a good start to the New Year. I obtained the Hank Williams set of The Mother’s Best Flour shows. There are 15 CDs, with three or four shows on each one. Hank sings some songs he never recorded in a studio and, of course, many of his familiar songs.

This set is packaged in a very unique, imaginative box. It is in the shape of the old familiar Philco radio with the dial pictured on the front and the tubes in the back. Turn the knob on the front and you hear Hank with the theme and the announcer opening the show. Inside you find 15 CDs and a DVD of Jett Williams interviewing Big Bill Lister, Don Helms and Glenn Snoddy (former WSM engineer). The DVD is titled Hank Williams The Untold Stories. There is also a 165-page book about the show. This is a great gift, or one to have, for true Hank Williams fans.

I hope you didn’t miss my New Year’s Day show. Actually I didn’t miss it ... the weather thing, you know.

New Year’s -- time for those so-called resolutions. How about making a “soft” resolution. What’s that, you say? Let’s face it; the majority of routine ones are broken almost before made.. Now, a soft one would give you a little wiggle room. You know, a few lame excuses beyond legitimate ones. So how about this for a start on your soft list: Get out more to support bluegrass, the traditional good stuff you can hear at jams or concerts/shows when and where available. Make contact with the artists as often as the opportunity presents itself.

I really can’t fill in much on the jam situation now, except to say as far as I know there are quite a few regulars continuing, but I haven’t had regular updates. Second on this “new” list: see how many friends or new (while we are on the new thing) acquaintances you can introduce to good bluegrass music, as in the title of my friend’s book, “America’s Music ... Bluegrass.”

The Jam Story

Now where do you go from here? How about jams? Vine Grove in the City Hall every Friday night, starting about 6. Colesburg Baptist Church, Friday nights, 6:30. Breckenridge Bluegrass Music Association, Thursday evenings, 6 p.m., McQuady, Kentucky. Fire Dept. Bluegrass Anonymous' new jam location: Holiday Inn Hurstbourne, Thursday, 7 p.m. And that’s the jam story.

More Bluegrass

Shepherdsville: January 7, Kings Highway Band. January 14, Kentucky Blue. January 21, Summertown Road. January 28, Audi Blaylock & Redline. Feb. 4, Ralph Stanley II. Good start.

Salt River Bluegrass Festival, Shepherdsville, Ky.: Feb. 18-19. Location: Paroquet Springs Conference Center. Fri., Cherryholmes, Tommy Brown, Kings Highway, and Driving Rain. Sat., Larry Sparks, Tommy Brown, Crossroads, Blue River, and Higher Vision. AFTER the show, join in the all-night Bluegrass jam at the Country Inn and Suites. Duet it, dew it, duet.

HAPPY NEW YEAR all, every year. Back in the groove on Sunday Bluegrass, WFPK 91.9 FM, every Sunday night, 8-11 p.m. Six months forward will be 22 years. WOW, I can hardly believe it. Thank y’all everyone. Why not ... let’s go get a doughnut!