The Biscuit Burners perform on the WDVX Blueplate Special today (May 18) at 1:00 P.M. (Eastern). Photo by Peter Montanti.

Steep Canyon Rangers stayin’ on the charts

The Steep Canyon Rangers continue to hold near the top of the XM bluegrass charts. Lovin’ Pretty Women (Rebel) is holding on the #5 spot on XM’s Bluegrass Junction Top 40 Bluegrass Albums.

Infamous Stringdusters - on XM Radio with Kyle Cantrell

The Infamous Stringdusters, on the verge of releasing their newest, self-titled project on the Sugar Hill label June 10, will be on on XM Radio’s Bluegrass Junction with Kyle Cantrell for a Track-by-Track review of The Infamous Stringdusters.

Schedule:

• Wednesday, May 28 at 6PM ET
• Thursday, June 5 at Midnight ET
• Tuesday, June 10 at 3PM ET

Bluegrass Calendar of Festivals and Events

May 28 1:00 P.M. (Eastern) — The Biscuit Burners will perform on the WDVX Blueplate Special, a live 1 hour radio show broadcast from downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. WDVX streams live online

May 28 - June 1 — Bluegrass & BBQ festival at Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO. Artists scheduled to play include the Bluegrass Brothers, The Grascals, Cherryholmes, Chris Jones, Dailey and Vincent, The Dixie Bee-liners, Balsam Range, Michelle Nixon and Drive, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Ronnie Reno & Reno Tradition and Midnight Ramblers.

Got an item for the calendar? Looking for Festivals, Special events, Jam Sessions, etc… If it relates to the world of Bluegrass we want to know about it. Send us the who, what, when and where and other details you’ve got and we’ll do our best to let everyone know about it. Send your Bluegrass Calendar items to subscriber@bluegrassjournal.com.

Share This

Dailey & Vincent’s Opry Debut - photo by Chris Hollo / Hollo Photographics

Nashville, Tenn. — Rounder Records duo Dailey & Vincent will be this week’s special guests of host Kyle Cantrell on the XM Bluegrass Junction Studio Special Series, beginning tomorrow, March 7, at 8 a.m. (EST) on XM 14.

Encore times are as follows:

• Saturday, March 8 - 11 AM EST
• Sunday, March 9 - 6 PM EDT
• Monday, March 10 - 8 PM EDT
• Tuesday, March 11 - Midnight EDT
• Thursday, March 13 - 3 PM EDT

The Studio Special Series features exclusive, live music and interviews with top bluegrass acts. Dailey & Vincent will perform songs from their self-titled debut album and trade stories and laughs with Cantrell. Their song “Sweet Carrie” is currently at #13 on the Bluegrass Junction Top 30 Tracks, for airplay during the month of February.

Dailey & Vincent were featured on the cover of the February issue of Bluegrass Now, and they grace the cover of the March/April issue of Bluegrass Music Profiles. This weekend finds them performing in Columbia, Mississippi; Argyle, Texas and Elgin, Texas. For tour updates and information, please visit http://www.daileyvincent.com/ and www.myspace.com/thedaileyvincentband.

Share This

Donna Ulisse and “America’s Truckin’ Sweetheart” Marcia Campbell, host of XM radio’s Open Road on channel 171 in the studio.

Donna Ulisse recently spent an hour in the XM Satellite studios with “America’s Truckin’ Sweetheart” Marcia Campbell, host of the popular show for truckers, Open Road on XM Channel 171. Campbell played several tracks off Ulisse’s current CD When I Look Back, a collection of fourteen self-penned tunes and spent the rest of the time getting to know Donna through an in-depth interview. “By the end of the hour I felt like I had a new girlfriend!”, said Ulisse.

Marcia Campbell has long been a supporter of bluegrass artists and their music from the time she started her own show in her home town of Dickson, TN in the 1990’s on WDKN Radio called The Muleskinner Bluegrass Show.

Tune in and catch the one hour show with Ulisse this Sunday morning, March 9, 2008 at 7:00 a.m. central time on XM Channel 171.

Share This

Blue Highway

XM Satellite Radio’s Bluegrass Junction will feature some of your favorite bluegrass artists on the new season of “The Studio Special Series,” a program that features an hour of exclusive, live music and conversation with bluegrass music’s top bands in XM’s Nashville studio. Artists will play live selections from their current albums, older tunes, and sometimes, songs they’ve never recorded or even performed anywhere before.

The Studio Special Series is hosted by Kyle Cantrell and can be heard on Bluegrass Junction (XM channel 14) or DirecTV channel 812 on Friday mornings at 8 AM EST with several encore times (listed below) the rest of the week.

Upcoming Guests:

• March 4 — Dailey & Vincent
• March 14 — The SteelDrivers
• March 21 — Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road
• March 28 — Blue Highway
• April 4 — Rhonda Vincent (Encore airing of January interview)
• April 14 — Bradley Walker

Encore times:

• Saturdays — 11AM EST
• Sundays — 6PM EST
• Mondays — 8PM EST
• Tuesdays — Midnight EST
• Thursdays — 3PM EST

Share This

Matt C. of The 9513 Country Music blog has written a very interesting article on the effects of the consolidation of radio ownership. He makes some very strong points in favor of consolidation of America’s media outlets, in regards to the proposed merger of XM and Sirius.

From a musical perspective, I’d agree that approving the XM-Sirius merger, is not going to have much of a negative effect on the musical end of radio programming. Given that each company has several channels of programming within a specific genre of music that appeal to a wider range of listeners, compared to their terrestrial counterparts and their extremely limited and narrow play lists.

While I agree that the XM-Sirius merger could be a win win situation for the music listeners, based purely on continuing the same strategy of multiple channels within a genre. IE:a bluegrass channel, a traditional country channel. etc.

That said I think one of the major downfalls of terrestrial radio that has rippled into the downfall of “music sales” is completely a product of media consolidation.

Taking all the local media owners out of the market and receiving your play lists from the corporate office has limited the music industries ability to market anything, new, credible and daring to the masses. Thus, a mere handful of labels have only a handful of acts that can get airplay.

Then, the establishment thinking prevails and the handful of acts that do make it on the radio end up sounding more and more like each other, as the powers that be chase some sound or image that got airtime last week, instead of finding and promoting actual artists that have new ideas, different sounds and influences.

With the consolidation of radio station ownership the airwaves have extremely limited slots to work a new artist into the mainstream and instead of developing artists that have integrity and talent, Joe Public ends up with another “act” willing to bend any which way, to get “the deal” and who can blame them. If they don’t bite, there’s a hundred people waiting in the wings for their chance.

If you get a chance I highly recommend reading The 9513’s story.

Last year, several country music artists… lobbied against increasing consolidation of radio ownership, arguing that the emergence of radio conglomerates has limited the ability of traditional artists to receive radio airplay. They’re right, but condemning ownership consolidation on those grounds demonstrates lack of imagination and economic understanding. Within a single market, radio consolidation means more, not less, radio diversity.

Suppose that Clear Channel Communications buys every station in a market with 20 licensed radio stations. …There’s no reason for Clear Channel to launch 3 top-40 country stations because Clear Channel would be competing with itself… Conversely, suppose that Clear Channel only buys ten of the 20 stations in market X and rival Cumulus Media snaps up the other ten… Cumulus and Clear Channel are likely to launch stations of similar format and compete with each other. …local media competition more often leads to multiplication of content than diversity.

You’ll find four to six country music stations on each Sirius and XM, but what you won’t find is substantial duplication of content from one station to the next,… I expect the country music fan should be able to listen to top 40 country, traditional country, outlaw country, bluegrass, Americana and other subgenres with little to no presence in over-the-air radio markets. Matt C. - The 9513 Country Music Blog

Share This