Michigan

July 3-5 — Leslie Bluegrass Festival - Leslie, MI. Bluegrass artists scheduled to appear include: Luke McKight, Gary Brewer, Karl Shifflett & Big Country, Lorrain Jordan & Carolina Road, The Larkins, Melvin Goins, Cedar Creek Junction and more. Tickets at the gate are $15 (Thu) and $20 (Fri & Sat) or a weekend pass will set you back $50.

Missouri

July 3-5 — Starvy Creek Bluegrass Festival - Conway, MO. Artists scheduled to appear include: Bobby Osborne & the Rocky Top X-Press, Larry Stephensen Band, Audie Blaylock & Redline, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Lonesome Road, Bull Harman & Bulls Eye and more. Single Day tickets are priced at $10 (Thu) and $15 (Fri & Sat) and a weekend pass is available for $35.00. Children under 12 are free and ages 12-16 are half off with a paid adult.

Pennsylvannia
July 3-6 Out Among The Stars Bluegrass Festival, Benton, PA. Bluegrass artists scheduled to play include: Karl Shifflett & Big Country, Pine Mountain Railroad, The Doerful Family, Lonesome River Band, Chris Jones & The Nightdrivers, James King, Newfound Road and more. A weekend pass at the gate will cost $70 and single day tickets run from $10 - $25 depending on day. Primitive camping is included free with a weekend pass.

Tennessee
July 3 — Vince Gill & The Steeldrivers Bluegrass Night at The Ryman, Nashville, TN. Show starts at 7:30 P.M. www.ryman.com for ticket information

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North Carolina

July 1-4 — Red White & Bluegrass Festival - Morganton, NC. Bluegrass Artists on the bill for this Free festival include: Junior Sisk and Ramblers Choice, Grasstowne, Chris Jones & the Nightdrivers, Kenny & Amanda Smith, Mountain Heart, Heather Berry, The Grascals, IIIrd Tyme Out, J.D. Crowe & the New South, Cherryholmes and more. See our earlier story on this festival.

Oklahoma

July 1-6 — Arbuckle Mountain 4th of July Jam - Davis, OK. The park will feature Jammig, jamming and even more jamming during this multi-day event. 7 tents will be available for open jams through out the grounds. Visit Arbuckle Mountain online for more information.

Pennsylvania
July 2-5 — Mountain Top Bluegrass Festival - Tarentum, PA. Bluegrass Artists on the schedule include: Eddie and Martha Adcock, Audie Blaylock and Redline, Karl Shifflett and Big Country, Tim Graves and Cherokee, Dailey and Vincent, The Grascals, Roni Stonemen and more. 3 day passes at the gate are $70 and and single day tickets are $30. Children under 10 are free and ages 10-16 recieve a 50% discount with paid adult.

Tennessee

July 2 — Sarah Siskind @ 3rd and Lindsley - Nashville, Tenn. Sarah, whose song “Lovin’ You” was recorded by the Infamous Stringdusters on their latest offering, will perform a 7:00 P.M. show. Cover is $8.00. For more info visit www.3rdandlindsley.com or call 615-259-9891.

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Tennessee

June 26 — Earl Scruggs with Family and Friends with The Infamous Stringdusters - Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman - Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, Tenn. Tickets are available for $24.50. The Ryman auditorium is located at 116 Fifth Ave. North. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster, The Ryman Box Office, online at Ryman.com or call 615-458-BLUE.

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Nashville, Tenn. — His incomparable resume includes 12 Grammy Awards, appearances on more than 2000 albums and a decade as the featured soloist with Alison Krauss & Union Station. Later this summer, three-time (and reigning) CMA Musician of the Year Jerry Douglas will add a new accolade to the list: The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum’s 2008 artist-in-residence.

Dobro in hand, Douglas will host four memorable evenings in August and September, each carefully curated by the artist to illustrate different facets of his glittering career. He will hold court in the Museum’s Ford Theater on August 19 and 27, and September 16 and 30; each show begins at 7 p.m.

Hailed as “Dobro’s matchless contemporary master” by The New York Times and lauded as “my favorite musician” by John Fogerty, Jerry Douglas has taken a once obscure and relatively unexplored instrument and harnessed it, through the power of his immense skill and creativity, to create some of the most distinctive sounds in American popular music. Guests attending Douglas’s residency shows should expect four unique evenings, with set lists and special guests drawn from across the wide swath he has cut into contemporary acoustic music.

Douglas, whose latest solo album, Glide, will be released by Koch Records on August 19, follows Cowboy Jack Clement, Earl Scruggs, Tom T. Hall, Guy Clark and Kris Kristofferson as the Museum’s sixth artist-in-residence.

“The tapestry of modern American acoustic music is woven with Jerry Douglas’s rich musical embroidery,” said Museum Director Kyle Young. “He has embellished recordings by Eric Clapton and Ray Charles, Earl Scruggs and Garth Brooks, James Taylor and Paul Simon, Pat Metheny and Phish, and a couple thousand more. He is a composer, producer, band member, recording artist and session player extraordinaire. But his talents are perhaps best enjoyed live, where he coaxes his Dobro through surprising and satisfying twists and turns and demonstrates its versatility across many genres of music.

“Whether he is fronting his own band, performing with Alison Krauss & Union Station or working on one of his many side projects, Jerry continues to explore and expand the Dobro’s vocabulary. He possesses a restless and majestic creative spirit that is constantly seeking new forms of expression, and in our residency tradition, we are excited to give him our stage for four one-of-a-kind performances.”

The son of an Ohio steelworker who played bluegrass on the side, Gerald Calvin Douglas was eight years old when he first heard both Bashful Brother Oswald and Josh Graves at a Flatt & Scruggs concert. Young Jerry originally wanted to play the banjo but became smitten by the Dobro’s sound: “The Dobro really caught my ear, the way Josh Graves played it…it was like a voice.” Douglas’s father altered a guitar so that the strings were high, allowing the youngster to play it like a Dobro. When Douglas was 12, his father bought him a real Dobro, and he began playing with his father’s band, the West Virginia Travelers.

In 1973, 17-year-old Jerry joined innovative bluegrass band the Country Gentlemen who, while respectful of tradition and steadfast in their use of acoustic instruments, were known for taking the genre into new arenas of repertoire and stylistic performance. He toured with them between his junior and senior years of high school, and again after his graduation.

Douglas next served a brief stint as a member of J.D. Crowe’s New South; he and bandmate Ricky Skaggs left in 1976 to form their own group, Boone Creek. The group’s tenure was brief, and ended when Skaggs was asked to join Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band. As the decade’s end drew near, Douglas rejoined the Gentlemen and began work on his first solo record, Fluxology. The album, which was released by Rounder Records in 1979, drew its title from Douglas’s nickname, “Flux.” This was the first of many solo projects recorded by Douglas when he was not recording or touring with others.

Also in 1979, Douglas again left the Gentlemen and this time joined Buck White & the Down Home Folks, who were touring as the opening act for Emmylou Harris. Douglas played on Harris’s seminal acoustic album, Roses in the Snow, and quickly became a sought-after session man in country’s emerging traditionalist vanguard. His work could be heard on some of the most highly regarded albums in the acoustic music field, including Tony Rice’s classic 1979 album Manzanita. In 1983, Douglas won a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental for his work on J.D. Crowe & the New South’s instrumental track “Fireball.” It was the first of dozens of music industry honors for him.

Douglas retired from the Whites’ road band in 1985 to concentrate on session work, appearing on recordings by Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Gail Davies, Skaggs and dozens of others. Simultaneously, he fronted two of MCA’s Master Series albums, Under the Wire (1986) and Plant Early (1989), which explored “newgrass” and Nashville New Age. In 1989, Douglas joined Strength in Numbers, an irregular ensemble whose members included Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Mark O’Connor. He also continued his session work.

By the late 1990s, Jerry not only continued to be in constant demand for recording sessions but had begun producing a growing number of albums, for himself as well as artists such as the Del McCoury Band, the Nashville Bluegrass Band and Jesse Winchester.

As the millennium neared, Douglas was invited to join Alison Krauss & Union Station, with whom he is about to celebrate his 10-year anniversary. Now known as Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, the band has allowed Douglas the best of both worlds: the opportunity for adventurous sonic collaboration with one of American music’s most respected artists, as well as ample free time to continue pursuing his own projects. On one such break, Douglas worked with producer T Bone Burnett on the soundtrack for the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? The smash CD, which has sold nearly 10 million copies, has been credited with reviving and broadening interest in acoustic roots music.

Douglas also formed the Jerry Douglas Band, where he has continued to break stylistic barriers. The group has headlined such diverse and prestigious festivals as Bonnaroo, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, and toured as the opening act for Paul Simon in 2006.

In June of 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts honored Douglas with a National Heritage Fellowship award (the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts) for his contributions to the excellence of Dobro guitar music. In addition to his Grammy and CMA Award accolades, he has also been honored by the Academy of Country Music, the International Bluegrass Music Association and the Americana Music Association. While he may be the most lauded Dobro player in music history, Douglas finds his greatest reward in pushing musical boundaries and expanding the vocabulary of his beloved instrument. “Being a musician…keeps me happy. It’s my job but it’s also my quest.”

Jerry Douglas residency event tickets ($30) will be on sale exclusively to Museum members July 14-20 (a one-year Museum membership is $25 for adults, $10 for youths). Tickets will go on sale to the public at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, July 21 and should be purchased online at www.countrymusichalloffame.com. For more information, call (615) 416-2001. Museum doors open at 6:00 p.m. for the 7:00 p.m. shows.

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Kentucky
June 12-15 — Festival of the Bluegrass - Lexington, KY. Bluegrass artists slated for this award winning festival include: Lonesome River Band, Don Rigsby, Larry Stephenson, the Lewis Family, IIIrd Tyme Out, J.D. Crowe & The New South, The Grascals, Mountain Heart, Seldom Scene, Dry Branch Fire Squad, and a few more. Ticket prices run $15 (Thurs) $35 (Fri, Sat) and $10 (Sun) for single day admission and a 4 day festival pass is $75 and for $10 more they’ll throw in “primitive” camping.

Pennsylvania
June 12-15 — Wind Gap Bluegrass Festival - Wind Gap, PA. Expect to see: Bobby Osborne & Rocky Top X-Press, Jesse McReynolds & the Virginia Boys, the Claire Lynch Band, James King, Bill Emerson/Sweet Dixie, The Lewis Family, Nothin’ Fancy, Dan Paisley & Southern Grass, The Biscuit Burners, The Abrams Brothers, Frank Wakefield and many more. Weekend festival passes available at the gate will go fro $70, Single day admission runs from $10-$30 depending on the day.

Tennessee
June 12-14 — Dumplin’ Valley JuneFest - Kodak, TN. Bluegras artists set to appear include: The Steeldrivers, Junior Sisk & Ramblers Choice, Dave Peterson & 1946, Nothin’ Fancy, Kenny & Amanda Smith, Seldom Scene, Jimbo Whaley & Greenbrier, Dailey & Vincent, Tim Graves & Cherokee, The Isaacs, Steep Canyon Rangers and more. Single day tickets run $25 (Thur) and $30 (Fri, Sat) or a weekend festival pass is available for $80 at the gate.

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