Go See Butch Robins Tonight!

BUTCH ROBINS & THE WORLD INTERNATIONAL BLUE GRASS BAND

Butch Robins and The World International Blue Grass Band will appear in the New River Valley at Rockwood-Manor Event Center, Dublin VA, on Wednesday, September 26^th. A Mix & Mingle with International world-class musical artists will be hosted from 6:00 – 6:45 pm with their debut performance from 7:00-8:30 pm. Tickets are $15 Advance, $20 Door. Students $10 Advance $15 Door. The Rockwood venue will be hosted in Rockwood’s Historic Barn Loft. Concessions will be provided by Floyd’s Over the Moon Café. This entertainment is presented by B Natural Productions in conjunction with The Fine Arts Center of the New River Valley.

Legendary banjoist, Butch Robins is joined by a collective of stellar acoustic string band musicians from around the planet who will be brought together in performance of music in the style of Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys. Butch met these band members during his international travels as a solo artist. These multi-instrumentalists from around the world are brought together in performance of ‘folk music in overdrive’ that has become an art for the common man worldwide. Their…Blowing the Cobbwebbs Out of Blue Grass… mini-tour in Southwest VA is a prelude to their appearances at the World of Bluegrass 2007 Business Conference & FanFest.

The band members include…

• Kazuhiro Inaba Japan Guitar & Vocals
• Arnold Lasseur Holland Mandolin & Vocals (The Bluegrass Boogiemen)
• Sean McKerr Ireland Bass & Vocals (The Tennessee Hennessees)
• Hamish Davidson Australia Fiddle & Vocals (The Davidson Brothers Band)
• Jan Johansson Sweden Fiddle & Vocals (Johansson’s Acoustic Music School)
• Butch Robins USA Banjo & MC
  

Butch Robins, Southwest Virginia’s own, has solid Blue Grass credentials as an alumni Blue Grass Boy and as a member of The New Grass Revival. He has performed in varied venues such as The Grand Olde Opry, Austin City Limits, The Lincoln Center, The Frontier in Las Vegas, The Ford Theater and The White House accompanying such musical giants as Bill Monroe, Harry James and Leon Russell.

The World International Blue Grass Band will be featured at FanFest at the 2007 World of Bluegrass Conference and Tradeshow hosted by The International Bluegrass Music Association in Nashville TN, October 1-5. As they make their way to Nashville, The World International Blue Grass Band will also be performing for The Richland’s Area Citizens for the Arts, Richland’s VA, on Sunday, September 30^th. A PBS recording of the band will be made as part of The Song Of The Mountains at The Historic Lincoln Center in Marion VA on Saturday, October 6^th.

Join Butch Robins & The World International Blue Grass Band for an evening of unique entertainment & musical history at Rockwood-Manor Event Center in Dublin VA on Wednesday, September 26^th. Rockwood is located 5 minutes from I 81, exit 98 onto Route 100 N.

For Tickets, Contact: The Fine Arts Center for the NRV at 540-980-7363 or www.facnrv.org.

Tickets will be sold at the door. A Rain or Shine Event.

Miss McLeod's Reel

Remember that show McCloud? I do! I'm not as young as I look!
Well, last night Ralph pulled out Miss McLeod's Reel (pronounced McCloud) . It's a tune I love and learned years ago, but it's among those tunes I never pull out because I figure no one knows it and it'll be a train wreck and everyone will hate me and a crowd will burn my house down.

Ralph knows better, and the jammers got on it last night.

If you are at all worried that you can't handle it, check out these kids!

If they can do it you can.

They play (according to the notes) Turkey in the Straw, Miss McLeod's Reel, and Hopak.

All of which begs the eternal question that only I seem to ask, which is, what did Miss McLeod do to inspire somebody to write her a reel?

JB's Cry Holy Unto the Lord

The JB's testified down at Radford Christian Church this morning.


Chris was having trouble remembering the words and locating his pick before playing, but it all worked out.
Ralph and Joe and Doug and Wayne were great as usual.

What did we play?
My memory is failing me already...

• Little White Church
• The Old Crossroads
• Cryin' Holy Unto the Lord
• Workin' on a Building
• I'll Fly Away

I suggested we play Rawhide people walked out, but nobody was with me.

Before I Get Old

Roger Daltrey must've had to take a leak or something. This is probably how this song is supposed to be played.

This is basically what I hear in my head when the JB's play Wheel Hoss.

One for the Jam

One for Clay in Texas

Paradise

John Prine's great song. This is the original artist, backed by the fine Nashville Bluegrass Band with Peter Rowan to boot.

Daddy won't you take me back to old Radford City!

Heckuva Fine Jam

All the dudes was out and jammin' last night. Joe seemed exceptionally inspired, pulling out Crossing the Cumberlands, and jacking 1952 Vincent Black Lightning up to its Del McCoury key of C. Chris tried to teach everybody I Hope You've Learned, but the group wasn't feeling learny.

Chris and Joe got to have an interesting banjo/mando session after ten. Once the whole crowd was gone, they had a little room to try out Old Dangerfield and Jerusalem Ridge, and the St. James Infirmary. Good times!!!
Here's some kid who's nowhere near as good as Joe. (And that's no knock on the kid...)

JB's Rock Dublin

We didn't need no stinkin' microphones.
The JB's contributed their ample talents to a worthy cause, namely the New River Land Trust.
Skip Slocum opened the show with some groovy old time music, and through in some delta blues for good measure. The beautiful people of the NRV were out in force and gave the JBs their best audiencing. The event was out at Rockwood Manor in Dublin. They've done incredible work on the building and it's got a great vibe. I want to live there, but I'm pretty sure they won't let me.

The JB's for reasons not worth describing here, played without amplification. I recorded the show as I normally do--just to see how the recording jibes with my memories of how the show went. The recordings usually sound better than I expect them to, and this one was no exception.

We sounded good, and projected well. What more can you ask for? We also got free drinks.
Put that all together and you have one more musical triumph for the Java Brothers.

I don't want to brag, but if I don't pump us up, who will?

The Java Brothers were From Stage Right to Stage Left:
Joe Abercrombie-banjo
Wayne Frye- guitar and C above middle C vocals
Doug Capobianco-upright bass
Chris Burgoyne- mandolin
Ralph Berrier-fiddle
Bill Adams- dobro, extra good karma for playing Salt Creek.

Happy Birthday, Bill!

I haven't managed it yet, but someday Bill Monroe's Birthday will be a national holiday!
On this day in 1911, Mr. Bill dropped in.

I was looking for stuff about his birthday and came across this from the page of Winnie Winston. He's a great banjo player who I'm familiar with from David Grisman's "Early Dawg" cd.

I guess this is probably Bill's "one thing" - that 1 thing that if you had to choose, would represent them in the encyclopedia that you sent to space to explain the world to aliens.

Mark your calendars! We're having a party October 13th

The inaugural flight of the Side Door Sessions is happening on Saturday October 13th, from 7 till at least 10. In this environment the music will be revered, respected, and enjoyed as best we're able.
Radford is home to tons of great musicians, and we're hoping to give them a chance to strut their stuff for the good people of our community.

Come out and support live music, won't you?

A donation of $5 to the music appreciation society is encouraged.

Side Door Sessions

Just a little plug for Chris Burgoyne's Jammin' Java Jump and Jive Jitters coming up. Several familiar faces will be playing at the Side Door at the corner of Third and Grove Avenues. New tunes, mash-ups and flub-ups expected. Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. A $5 courtesy is requested to cover costs of the room.

Bluegrass Boys

They don't come by often, but every once in a while, we get somebody at the jam who's seen it all, and been everywhere.
Tonight we had a visit from Butch Robins, who spent some time with Bill Monroe. I got to talk to Butch at some length and he has a lot of stories to share.
Check him out here:


Butch is the only Bluegrass Boy I ever picked with. We didn't play tonight, but he sat in with us at the jam about 2 years ago.

Then check out his website here.
Be his friend here.
And find more here.

Oh, and the regular Coffee Mill crew was there and rockin, and we had some new guys, too. Who was the dobro player? He was smokin'.

Gold Rush

One of my all time favorite tunes. One of the first ones I learned to play.
When I played with Bill and Olen Gardner two weeks ago. One of them had the idea to start with Goldrush. I had a brain fart and couldn't remember the tune and it was very troubling to me--like I'd forgotten my own phone number or something.


Here it is:


Robert Bowlin, the fiddler here, is another one of those guys who is annoying for the very reason that they're so good. He won the Winfield Flatpicking Championship. [Ho-hum, just another day...] He gets the fiddle gig with Bill Monroe. [Yawn...]
He can probably play any instrument you stick in front of him.

Bela with DMB

No, not the Del McCoury Band, the other DMB.

Concert for Virginia Tech

I didn't make it out to the Due South BBQ jam last night as I was at the Concert for Virginia Tech. I actively skipped Phil Vassar, missed NAS, and got in there just in time for John Mayer. He was good. I wasn't that familiar with his work, but he is a pretty wicked guitar player. I was most impressed that his band was a bunch of old guys! They made the JBs look young.

Dave Matthews was good, too. Surprisingly light on radio hits for a benefit show at a college, but I think most of the crowd was more familiar with his catalog than me. I kind of lost track of him after the first two albums. But he didn't play anything from the first album until 2 hours into the show.
He had a full horn section, which sounded really good to me.

Thought I spotted Ms. Babylon up in section 16, but I wasn't 100% sure. I turned around again and she was gone. Was Mr. Berrier interviewing the stars last night?

Check the Roanoke Times and find out!

Watch em set up the stadium in seconds!

These guys got a good fiddler!

Black Twigs

First Monday in Sept.

It was a beautiful Monday night at the jam. Most of the usual suspects were present. There were a couple of new folks out as well! We missed Joe and Chris greatly! However, we had two players from Roanoke, and their wives sang beautifully. We also had a guest appearance from Wayne Eastridge on the dobro. It made for an interesting evening. We only had one banjo player, and three basses at one point. Only two played at a time, but there was certainly a bottom end to the sound. We also had two visitors from the UK. They indicated they had been in US before and heard some bluegrass on the radio. They decided to come back for a musical experience. They actually picked the jam as a place they wanted to come. They were impressed! (Think what it would have been like with Joe and Chris on site!)

Ralph says that the Mill is going to start staying open until 11pm. Some of us may need to get permission to stay out later! Either way it goes, the jam is still the mental health break that I need each week. If I have to miss, I feel it!

Hope to see EVERYONE back next week!!

Girl from the Greenbriar Shore

A good old tune!
Click here!