By Request...

Senor Lester! Respect!

Greatest Cat Evah! Lestah!
Music by Best Radford Band Evah! Javah! Bruthahs!

Get your pick on!

Got to get me to one of these pickin' camps...
The guy on the right is my old guitar teacher MarkCosgrove, from Doylestown, PA -my last known address before moving to the NRV.

He got tired of teaching chumps like me and signed on with Jerry Douglas for a couple tours. The guy is a machine.

Another Golden Evening of Beautiful Song

Good jammin' last night! Kudos to Mistah Ralph for bustin' out some new songs. Well I guess none of em are new at this point--some fresh songs, anyway.
Cold Wind and Can't You Hear me Calling. Jason is the new banjo sensation. ("New" again a funny word because he's been hanging around about 2 years, I think.) He's been practicin'!

Aseneth is gettin there on the banjo, Wayne is moving to the front of the line on the mando, Casey's movin to Nashville, I think, and I'm movin' outside.

We made our first public, semi-formal announcement of the Side Door Sessions to the Jamfolk.

Pass the word:
7-10, Saturday October 13th at the Side Door. $5 Per person!
It's at 3rd and Grove. The entrance is the "side door" on Grove St, facing the big parking lot and the office supply store.


I'd like to get the thing sold out ahead of time, so if you know who's coming with you now, get with me, gimme the $5 apiece and I'll print you a groovy ticket.
We're trying to cap it at 35 people, and judging by the response so far, it's gonna be a hot ticket.

Sept.23rd

Thought you may want to add our gig on Sept. 23rd to the list of upcoming JB sightings. I think the folks at the Radford Christian Church would love to have some visitors that have come to hear the JB gospel set. The church is at Second and Carter Sts. in Radford. The service starts at 11am. Should be a good time!

Olen Gardner and the Zippiatoes!

I got a call from Bill Adams last week asking for Dale's number. He said he needed a guitar player to play to with him and Olen Gardner in Christiansburg. I gave him Dale's number and I guess Bill felt kinda guilty so he asked me to play, too. Well, we all showed up to play at Christiansburg this morning at the Heritage Days festival. It was local legend Olen, and Bill, the great young picker Abe Gorsky and his pals, and local legend Jack Hinshelwood of the Celtibillies. Java Brother Doug Capobianco was our Bassman. We had about a dozen pickers.
It worked out good, though.
At a break Olen mentioned he was on the U-Tube. I found it here:

It was a fun gig! We got to see a real transformer blow up and everything.
I'll tell you the whole story some time.

PS--We were not officially called the Zippiattoes--Olen certainly had nothing to do with it! I like to play tunes at the pace of "zippy," which in italian musical terminology translates roughly to "zippiatto."

Bile 'Em Dirty Hippies Down!

Check this out. Clarence White, Rowan, Grisman, Richard Greene, and oh yeah...Bill Keith! Since Clarence's brother Roland replaced Rowan with Bill Monroe, I count that as 3.5 Bluegrass Boys on this show.

New Camptown Races and Dark Holler.

Show Off

Mark O'connor is too good.
He is the greatest fiddler of his generation, and picks great guitar and mandolin just to be annoying.

Here he is in Strength in Numbers, which is him and a bunch of other slackers.

Muddy Water

It's always flooding somewhere.

The Home of the Radford Scene

Well another jam has done come and gone, and I got to go to this one!
Mistah George was out again playing that Country Gentleman style banjo. (Not to be confused with the Country Gentlemen style banjo.) The students were back and we gave em a little sampler of the old and the new. It's funny to us that our "progressive" tunes are 30-plus years old. [Honkytonk Women and I Know You Rider are, I guess, what I'm thinking of.] Anybody made any good pop music in the last 10 years that we can appropriate? I'm open to suggestions.

We had a 2nd jam outside last night, which is always nice in the summertime. We were running through the old school songbook. Then Joe came out and we worked on our "Crossing the Cumberlands." Even got a chance to bang out a Pretty Polly, which is hard to do with the big jam. The timing always gets whacky. [You've got to come to an agreement about how it's going to go ahead of time.]

So the Mill is the current hub of the Radford music scene, as far as I can tell. I even met a guy in Blacksburg, who lives in Radford, and even though I'd never met him before, when I told him I played Bluegrass, he rightly assumed that I'd been playing at the store. It's what musicians do around here.

Here's to the grand daddy of Bluegrass joints.

If you ever get to Nashville, don't you dare skip the Station Inn!

Del is the King

With apologies to Richard Thompson, this version is 500 times better than any Richard Thompson version of this Richard Thompson song.

The 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

Steve Earle and Del McCoury

This is from the era of Steve's collaboration with Del. They made an album called "The Mountain" which I still feel is SE's best.

They fell out fairly publicly.
The Police got back together, why not Del and Steve?

Love me some Norman Blake

Ralph Stanley is good, too.

And Mike Compton is pretty good, also...

Max Roach

Another one done gone on...
Our boy Wayne is a drummer, so he'll feel this one. Best drummer evah, Max Roach passed away.

Check him out.

I Heart David Grier

Here he's playing Bill Monroe's "Roanoke" with local hero Herschel Sizemore, the author of jam favorite "Rebecca."


Apparently the lucky Mr. Grier got to sit in with Hot Rize and play at Steve Martin's wedding.

I think the JBs have to cultivate some more high-profile acquaintences.

Missed the Monday Jam

Howdy friends,
I missed the Jam Monday as I was working up in NYC. [Any of y'all ever seen Midnight Cowboy?]
Anyway, hope somebody will let me know how it went. I'll bet it sounded something like this...


I ran into Lisa, one of the ladies who booked us earlier this year for the two "Hoedown for a Cure" shows we did and she said they're looking to do it again bigger and better next year, so look out for that. I ran into her while CB and I were visiting Norris Hall, where all the shooting was. All the folks there are working extra hard to get the ESM department back on its feet. For lots of people it's out of the news and faded into history, but something like that doesn't really go away for the people who were affected, so keep em in your thoughts.

Lisa is all for moving forward, and as I am of a like mind, who's up for the Due South Jam tomorrow night?

I wanna do this tune...

Lester and Earl

No, not my cats...but almost as good.

Few people know that the "Randy Lynn Rag" was originally called the "Horny Lynn Rag" but the Martha White people made 'em change it.



How about that Paul Warren on the fiddle?

Old Dangerfield

This is a great late era Bill Monroe. 3 parts.




It came out on Master of Bluegrass, which I believe is out of print. WUVT had it on vinyl when I was there, but someone stole it. David Grier plays a great version.

Galax

I haven't made it so far. I went back in '98 and had a good time. I didn't know anybody. Now I'll know a heap o people and I'll do some savage pickin'. Or, I would, if I went. But it's sooooooooooooooo hot. Have there been any deaths yet? I can't believe there haven't been some emergencies.

I can't decide if this video makes me want to go or not. I guess it kind of does.



But then again, it's soooooooo hot!

EMD

Interesting lineup. Best jammin' tune evah.

iBuenos Dias!

The Dawg plays El Cumbanchero!





J'aime beaucoup le Dawg!

Next Gig

JB's are tentatively confirmed to play in Dublin on Sunday September 16th at Rockwood Manor out in Dublin. It's for the Land Trust's annual Land and River Revel. Local banjo ace (clawhammer), and Floyd resident, Skip Slocum is reported to be playing too, so guests are guaranteed at least SOME good music. Look out for us at Lefty's in Blacksburg, too. Dates to follow.


Till then, enjoy:

Cheyenne

Maybe this will be all Bill Monroe all the time. Well, probably not, but I wouldn't mind if it was. Let's play this one--if you know Old Home Place, you already know half of it.

Roanoke

JD Crowe with the mighty Mike Compton!
They do it just like us! :)

Tony Rules

Another Tuesday Morning...

'Sup homies? The kids were cookin' at the Mill last night. I had to cut out early, but I don't think it hurt anybody. Wayne was pounding his mandolin into submission, Aseneth was breakin' in her fiddle, and Ralph was leading the crew as usual. In my short time there, I heard some good choppin': Cripple Creek, Fire on the Mountain, what else? Hmmm...maybe I wasn't there that long! No Joe Abercrombie last night. What's up with that? He's almost as unreliable as Chris Burgoyne!

Watch out for the hot new banjo player on the scene. Things are progressing nicely, I'd say.

Any of y'all goin' to Galax this week? I'm thinking about heading down Thursday night. Who's with me?

Seldom Scene

This is actually my favorite lineup of the Seldom Scene. Fast and tight.

Another try...

Southern Flavah!

Here's the maestro...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBjCN2EGrIw