Festival Preview at Old Settler's

I won't be blogging or updating the Live Roots Music bee for the next few days while attending Old Settler's Music Festival in Austin (unless it turns out they have WiFi on site, which is doubtful). Check back next week for OSMF highlights and other festival news.

Telluride NightGrass schedule posted

Festivarians who don't get enough music on the Telluride Bluegrass Festival stages can fill out their weekend attending any of the extra-cost late-night appearances by festival performers at four indoor venues around town. Planet Bluegrass announced the schedule of NightGrass performers yesterday. Tickets go on sale April 26 at the Planet Bluegrass site. Here's the lineup:

Wednesday, June 14
The 5th Annual Bluegrass Kick-Off Party with Yonder Mountain String Band
Telluride Conference Center
8pm music, 7:30pm doors
$22 in advance

Thursday, June 15
Drew Emmitt Band
Sheridan Opera House
11pm show, 10:30pm doors
$25 in advance

Wayword Sons
Fly Me to the Moon Saloon
10pm show
$10 in advance

Friday, June 16
Yonder Mountain String Band
Sheridan Opera House
11pm show, 10:30pm doors
$30 in advance

Sweet Sunny South
Fly Me to the Moon Saloon
10pm show
$10 in advance

John Prine
Michael D. Palm Theatre
Details and ticket info coming soon...

Saturday, June 17
Tim O'Brien Band
Sheridan Opera House
11pm show, 10:30pm doors
$30 in advance

Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers
Fly Me to the Moon Saloon
10pm show
$10 in advance

Sunday, June 18
Chris Thile
Sheridan Opera House
11pm show, 10:30pm doors
$25 in advance

Vince Herman and Great American Taxi
Fly Me to the Moon Saloon
10pm show
$10 in advance

Ferg previews Telluride on Denver radio show

Chief festivarian Craig Ferguson, president of Planet Bluegrass, which operates Telluride Bluegrass, Rocky Grass and several other Colorado festivals, appeared this morning on Denver's roots rock radio station KCUV to preview the upcoming Telluride event.

As a way to illustrate the uniqueness of a live festival, he brought along some of his favorite tapes from the vault of Telluride's 34-year history (although several of his selections would not play properly on the station's audio equipment). He also highlighted a couple of highly anticipated performers for the 2006 festival, which runs June 15-18 in Telluride, Colo. (Visit Planet Bluegrass for all the details.)

For past highlights, Ferguson selected an unscheduled appearance by Bonnie Raitt during a set by Jackson Browne, and another Raitt duet with Susan Tedeschi singing John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery." Both Raitt and Prine are on the bill this year.

He also selected Shawn Colvin's first appearance at the festival, when she made a huge impression on the audience, and John Cowan's moving performance of "Dark As a Dungeon" during a festival-wide power outage. He also played cuts from the vault by Nickel Creek and Yonder Mountain String Band,

Bands at Telluride often want to do more than just play their standard sets, Ferguson said. This year, indie rock band Barenaked Ladies will do a special bluegrass set that they will record for a future live album.

He said that each year there are artists on the bill that stretch the boundaries and cause festival-goers to raise their eyebrows, and that there is also always one or more less-well-known artists who give a breakthrough performance. In the first category, Ferguson suggested that The Decembrists and Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings may surprise attendees, while Steven King & The Sixers is a prime candidate for a breakthrough.

Although Telluride offers much more than bluegrass, "the bluegrass bands are always the last ones standing," Ferguson said, making the case that bluegrass forms the foundation for the other genres of music at Telluride.

That mixture of genres built on top of bluegrass may be Colorado's important contribution to the world of bluegrass, Ferguson claimed, pointing to such home-state innovators as Hot Rize and Yonder Mountain String Band that have had a major impact on directions in the music.

Catch the buzz on Live Roots Music

To capture roots music news and opinion from across the blogosphere, I've been playing around with an interesting new Internet news aggregator called The Personal Bee. It's still an experimental system, but I'm pleased enough with the results to make by own bee, Live Roots Music, available to the public.

The bee aggregates news feeds from about 20 suppliers of music news and opinion. As the editor, or beekeeper, I am able to select recommended articles and display them on top of my bee. So even though my feeds include content from non-roots genres and non-festival formats, I am able to feature content that is appropriate to my interests. Unfortunately, I am less able to manipulate one of the system's coolest features, its Buzziness index, which you'll find is too general to be really useful yet.

Hopefully, the Personal Bee technology will improve as it gets closer to commercial release. Meanwhile, Live Roots Music serves a useful purpose by collecting all the best of bluegrass, folk, and Americana-related festival news in one location. If you like what you see, you can register with the site to subscribe to my bee or select from 50 or so other bees available on subjects from politics to technology. Enjoy.

FestivaLink live downloads debut at MerleFest

For several years now, bands and festivals have experimented with ways to offer for-pay performance recordings that would be available on CD or over the Internet soon after the live event. Now a new service, FestivaLink, has been launched that could provide a standard system for providing such content.

The upcoming MerleFest event is the first festival to partner with FestivaLink. According to MerleFest, all performances on the festival's main stages (Watson stage and Cabin stage) will be made available through the FestivaLink site. All recordings will be fully legal, since both the artist and the festival will share in the revenue stream. The music will be available both in lossy mp3 and lossless FLAC formatsPricing has not yet been announced, or already burned to CDs.

This one bears watching, since free unauthorized festival recordings are routinely shared among music fans today. Both festivals and artists have tolerated such recording and trading, but many in the industry would like to see a standard system for deriving income from recordings of live performances.

FestivaLink hopes to sign up other major festivals after its debut at MerleFest. If it succeeds, it could do for concert sharing what Apple's iTunes store did for recorded digital music.

Strawberry announces complete schedules

Except for one TBA for its Spring event, Strawberry Music Festivals posted complete schedules for its two 2006 festivals, including a number of previously unannounced acts.

The new acts for Spring are Laura Love Duo, La Guitara, Assembly of Dust, and Bearfoot Bluegrass. For Fall, That 1 Guy and Harry Manx are the latest additions. The night-by-night headliners for Spring are Ryan Shupe & The Rubber Band, Los Lobos, John Haitt & The North Mississippi All-Stars, and Patty Griffin. For Fall, the closers are Incendio, Rodney Crowell Band, Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Thunderbirds (correction: His Fabulous Superlatives), and The Sam Bush Band.

Among lots of other exciting performers, I'm psyched to see La Guitara, the project of cross-genre female guitar innovators, including Patty Larkin. Many on the Strawberry email list are excited about Harry Manx, a Canadian performer who mixes acoustic blues and Indian raga musical styles. Festival Preview will have more lineup analysis in the near future.

Telluride schedule posted with more new acts

Telluride's impressive mix of bluegrass, new grass, jam grass, and roots rock was filled out today with the announced additions of The Decembrists, Drew Emmit Band, Ryan Shupe & The Rubber Band, and the Wayword Sons. I'll have more analysis on the full lineup in the future. For today, enjoy the day-by-day lineup at the Planet Bluegrass site and start dreaming about an incredible weekend of music.

Hanging with the Telluride chat group

I got a chance to hang out online last night with some of the Telluride faithful, who are amping up their anticipation for the June 15-18 festival. One thing that struck me was that out of about a dozen chatters, at least five were from out of state. The ringleader online, as he apparently is on-site in the main campground, was Telluride Tom, also referred to as "the mayor of Town Park."

Tom and the others made me feel very welcome (this will be my first year at the Telluride), and they were interested to learn about Festival Preview. Tom also sent me his writeup of his 25 years of experiences at the festival, including the story of how he gained recognition as mayor and recipient of his free lifetime pass. Since the article may appear in the festival program this year, I won't share any more of it here.

Future chats will take place Monday nights until the festival on the Festivarian Forum in Yahoo Groups, usually commencing after Jerry Lunsford's Hippie from Olema radio program has finished streaming at 7:30 MDT.

Both Strawberry festivals are sold out

The last tickets for Strawberry Fall were sold yesterday, several weeks after Spring also sold out, continuing the trend of earlier sellouts each year as the festival, now in its 25th season, continues to grow in popularity. Those who did not get tickets are not entirely out of luck, however. Strawberry Ticket Exchange, an independent site unaffiliated with the festival, is the best place to look. Craig's List is another. Be aware that there are more buyers than sellers, however.

My experience is that a good number of tickets free up during the last three or four days before the festival opens. If you really want to go, there's a good chance you'll get them at the last minute. Don't let unscrupulous sellers gouge you from more than the face value, however. Nobody wants to seeing scalpers making a profit on the festival. It is not The Strawberry Way.

FP radio is on the air

I'm trying out a cool new feature, Festival Preview Radio, which you'll find at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar on this page. It is based on Pandora, the Internet music system designed to help users discover new artists similar in style to their existing favorite artists.

Pandora is the commercial product that grew out of The Music Genome project, as research project to classify music styles and performers according to a taxonomy of 400 attributes. The idea is that you enter the names of favorite musicians or songs into the program and it will play back other similar music. Full-length, high-fidelity songs then stream to your computer. It works through ordinary Flash-enabled web browsers, so you don't need to download any new software.

For Festival Preview Radio, I've input the performers booked for upcoming festivals to create a "radio station" for each festival. Keep in mind that the songs selected may be selections by artists either in the lineup or others similar in style to those in the lineup. Therefore you can think of the Grey Fox station not as a playlist of performers appearing at the festival, but of a larger set of artists that the festival management might have booked if they had more stage slots and budget.

So far, I've put up stations for Old Settlers', Strawberry Spring and Grey Fox, and I'll put up more festival stations soon. Since each festival includes a range of musical styles, you hear a variety of styles on each. Still, it is interesting to compare the stations to see how the system interprets the varying personalities of the different festival. Check it out, and enjoy the music..

Larue matter closed

Yesterday's little dustup on the Strawberry email list has played itself out. I'm pleased to say that a number of respected members of the list spoke up in my defense. Larue posted a message acknowledging that his opinion, which he says he still holds, had been outvoted, and that he would refrain from further comments about Festival Preview and this writer. I also consider the matter closed and look forward to future involvement with the list.

For those of you who have an interest of all things Strawberry, but do not participate in the list, I can highly recommend it as an informative and nuturing online community. Here's the signup page.

Reply to Larue

This morning I've come under attack from a frequent poster on the Strawberry email list who objected to my recent contribution to the list about the jamband-roots music crossover. The poster, who goes by the name "Larue Porkefuss," objects to what he considers to be an attempt from a "professional marketer" to use the list for personal business purposes.

Larue's posting contains a good deal of personal vitriol that I'd rather not further provoke with a reaction. However, his underlying point deserves a response. Like Larue himself and others who post to festival email lists, I sometimes offer news and opinions I think will be of interest to list members. One distinction is that I am not just an individual (though I always use my real name), but I also have a blog and website with related content, and I generally include a link to these in my postings.

I am by no means unique in this. Many of the posters on the Strawberry and other email lists include links to radio programs, festivals, bands, and other business entities with which the poster has a relationship. However, I recognize that using another group's list to promote oneself is not good form. Likewise, it is poor online etiquette to spam list members with unsolicited emails.

That's why I have been very careful not to cross the line in my postings and mailing. First, my list contributions are fairly infrequent. I've started fewer than 10 threads on the Strawberry list in the past year. More importantly, I assure that my posts are relevant to the lists' purpose and that they contribute something interesting to the discussion. Of course, relevance and interest are subjective qualities, and it is possible that Larue or others might not agree with my evaluations of these things.

For example, the post in question contained analysis of trends at roots music festivals generally, and mentioned Strawberry only tangentially. If one of the conventions of the Strawberry list were to confine the discussion to matters of immediate relevance to the Strawberry festivals, then one might argue that my post was off-topic. However, in several years of reading almost every post to the Strawberry list, I have found many that discuss subjects not directly related to Strawberry.

As far as hijacking the list for my business purposes, I have never spammed list members with Festival Preview emails. Last December, when I put out the first email newsletter for Festival Preview, I added a number of names of Strawberry list members to my own list. However, these were all people with whom I had had direct interactions, either on the list or in personal emails. Also, I made sure it was easy for recipients to notify me or my list management provider to opt out of receiving any further emails. Since that first mailing, I have operated entirely on an opt-in basis.

Larue's was one of the names I included in that first mailing, based on earlier email exchanges we'd had. After receiving my December mailing, Larue asked to be removed from my list, which he was.

It is likely that Larue's animosty to Festival Preview goes back to the poll I conducted among Strawberry list members after the Spring 2005 festival. He was one of a few list members who felt that such a poll was contrary to the Strawberry way. That opinion was of course an entirely legitimate one, and he and others had every opportunity to express it, including in the poll itself.

I also privately extended the opportunity for Larue to write up his objections to the poll for unedited publication on the Festival Preview site, an offer he did not reply to. However, in today's rant, he wrote, "Mr. Ruby, don't you DARE email me, in yer defense. That would be even ruder than what I percieve [sic] you are doing . . . I want nothing to do with you."

Fair enough. I'm not sending him any email and he is not under any obligation to read what I post to the list. However, he also seems to want to have me censored or perhaps banned from the list, an escalation of his attack.

That's also his right, but it doesn't seem very sporting. It's not like Festival Preview is a big corporation or media heavyweight. Rather it's a modest website run by one individual who has a passion for the music and a desire to communicate about it. It is true that I am seeking to expand my readership and ultimately to derive some revenues from the content and services Festival Preview provides.

If that offends Larue, I regret that. But I have heard from many more people who are interested in what I am doing, and I fully intend to go on providing them with news and information about Strawberry and other roots music festivals.

Terrific David Bromberg profile

Ever since seeing David Bromberg a year ago at Strawberry Spring, I've been curious to learn how he ended up as a violin maker and dealer and musical laureate in Wilmington, Del. Today's Washington Post has a wonderful front page article, "In Fine Fiddle," that paints a three-dimensional portrait of the virtuoso guitarist who worked with just about every major folk-rock musician and led his own band in the '70s and '80s before quitting the touring life.

These days, Bromberg is playing a modest schedule of festival and club dates, in addition to his day job as a fine instrument dealer and role as Wilmington's musical muse. This month, he'll be playing at MerleFest, and he is also on the bill at the Floyd Fest, Edmonton Folk and Rhythm & Roots festivals later this season.

Trends in the OSMF artist profiles

We've posted our "baseball card"-style artist profiles for Old Settler's Music Festival. A couple of interesting trends pop out of the data:

In Austin, "regional" is also "national." The local angle is important to festival promoters around the country. That's why you will see a strong Colorado lineup at Telluride or Rocky Grass, plenty of California acts at Strawberry, a Pacific Nortwest flavor at Wintergrass, and a heavy dose of Southeastern bands at MerleFest. But one thing that is special about Old Settler's is the number of national and mid-tier performers who are based in Austin or who have local connections.

At the upcoming festival, Terri Hendrix, Monte Montgomery and Susan Gibson are among the regional performers building major national reputations. Todd Snider and Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez are breakout acts with strong Austin roots. Finally, Flounders Without Eyes, Sarah Jarosz, The Grassy Knoll Boys, Green Mountain Grass, The Texas Swing Kings, Lonestar Bluegrass Band, and Slim Richey & Kat's Meow are regional performers with active local followings.

Jamband-roots crossover is good business. The category of festivals we cover tends to appeal to an older audience of roots music afficionados, and one of the challenges for promoters of these fests is to find a way to attract younger music fans without alienating their older base. That is easier these days when many of the youth-oriented jam bands are including bluegrass and other acoustic music elements in their styles.

That's why you see most of the roots festivals packing their lineups with acts such as Yonder Mountain String Band, Hot Buttered Rum, and many others. (The flip side of this coin is the appearance of hardcore bluegrass acts like the Del McCoury Band on the bill of jam band and indie rock festivals.)

Festival Preview is especially interested in tracking this phenomenon, and in analyzing whether the lineup adjustments actually succeed in attracting a different demographic. We'll have our first chance to put that to the test later this month when attending Old Settler's Music Festival, where Keller Williams is the headline act and three other jam acts--New Monsoon, Flounders Without Eyes, and Green Mountain Grass--are on the bill alongside traditional roots players like Del McCoury, Peter Rowan, and Uncle Earl.

Welcome Melody Trip

I've always believed that more is merrier in media markets. That's why the trends toward one-newspaper towns and radio monopolies are bothersome. The media owners get lazy, the content gets boring, and the audiences are poorly served. Of course, the explosion of diverse content and viewpoints online is an important force in the opposite direction.

It is in that spirit that we welcome a new online media venture to the music festival space. Melody Trip launched earlier this week as a festival-goer community site seeking to cover all genres of music but primarily focused on the indie rock and jamband markets. The site has ambitious plans, mostly unfulfilled for now. It aims to provide a comprehensive festival directory, news, travel services, shopping, contests, and especially community features for festival-goers.

Some of those features may compete with things we're doing with Festival Preview, but we are pleased to see that there's another group of people with the passion and blind faith that it takes to launch a web publishing business focused on the live music market.

To demonstrate our support, Festival Preview has started a satellite blog on the Melody Trip site. We may duplicate some items from here, but will mainly use it as a way to discuss the intersection of the roots music and jamband festival markets. Come by for a visit, and take a tour through Melody Trip's ambitious site.