It’s that time of year again, when all those holiday letters arrive from folks we haven’t seen in years, telling us how they’ve been bungee-jumping in New Zealand and such. But here’s one year-end note that, hopefully, you’ve been part of.

Bluegrass Underground is closing out what by any measure has been a year of seismic proportions. The biggest news is that the BGU experience is now as close as your TV. With its fall debut, Bluegrass Underground became Bluegrass Underground, National Public Television’s hottest new music show, taking viewers from around the country deep into Cumberland Caverns for a high-def look at “Austin City Limits-meets-Nova.”

But even as the show has gone nationwide, (and of course, worldwide on the Web) some of the most memorable moments of 2011 were the most intimate: the haunting majesty of Ralph Stanley singing “O Death” to a pin-drop-silent sellout crowd back in March. Or the power going out in the middle of New Found Road’s June show, as, without lights or sound, the band didn’t miss a lick, Joe Booher going into an extended mandolin jam, before Tim Shelton rang through the pitch black, singing – what else? – “Ain’t No Sunshine.”  There were bluegrass legends like Larry Sparks and Doyle Lawson, great new bands like Milk Drive and Greensky Bluegrass as well as major legends-in-the-making like New Found Road, Sierra Hull and the all-star Boxcars.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of concerts in my time, starting before I was 10, when my parents took me to see people like Van Cliburn and Mahalia Jackson, and going on to a 25-year career covering music for daily newspapers, as well as 40 years of playing music professionally (yes, I’m old). But I have never seen a cooler venue than the Volcano Room. Amazing what a few million years of construction can do. And it helps to have an infallible Architect, of course.

But even after that momentous year, 2012 promises to steal the show. Look no further than the weekend of Feb. 24-26, as Bluegrass Underground TV shoots its second season.

Friday, Feb. 24, it’s the first-ever evening Bluegrass Underground, with a truly jaw-dropping lineup that includes the IBMA’s newest Hall of Fame inductee, Del McCoury, with his  Del McCoury Band, plus future IBMA Hall of Famer and BGU perennial fave Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver. Add to that the hottest Americana act to come out of Nashville in years –the duo of Joy Williams and John Paul White, better known as The Civil Wars, whose Jan. 12 Ryman show sold out instantaneously. The David Mayfield Parade fills out that very special night.

Not a bad start, but then, on Saturday, it’s Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill and his all-star western swing band, The Time Jumpers, owners of Monday nights at The Station Inn, the hottest weekly ticket in Middle Tennessee. The Time Jumpers feature one of the best singers alive,  Dawn Sears, as well as cowboy music great Ranger Doug. Add to that Nashville’s reigning steel man, Paul Franklin, and a bunch of other session aces and it really doesn’t get any better. But wait, there’s more, as they say in those infomercials.  Jim Lauderdale, a man of many hats, from Americana to Bluegrass to mainstream country, will make his Bluegrass Underground debut. And, in the newcomer slot, dynamic singer/instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz.

Sunday’s 1 p.m. show features one of the greatest instrumentalists of our time in any genre – dobro master Jerry Douglas, taking a break from his regular gig with Alison Krauss and work with everyone from Elvis Costello to Paul Simon (he’s also been playing in an electric  jazz fusion trio he jokingly describes as “Jethro Beck”). Jerry will top a young, Americana-edged lineup with the Black Lillies, singer/songwriter and former V-Roy Scott Miller and Jackson Mayo’s favorite band, The Vespers.

It’s all coming soon to your TV, but why wait? You know it’ll be even better live.

Larry Nager

The two futures of bluegrass arrived in my mailbox in the fall of 1972. I was an 18-year-old college sophomore with a bluegrass radio show on Ohio State’s campus station when a promo package from Starday Records in Nashville arrived with two LPs. The first marked a real change in the bluegrass world by a bunch of hippie kids with the name  New Grass Revival. Featuring fiddle-mandolin prodigy Sam Bush, just out of his teens, it opened with “Great Balls of Fire” and never let up, a radical departure from traditional bluegrass that set the template for every jamgrass band to follow.

 The other was less immediately eye-catching. It was also by a young guy, leading a young band, except for a white-haired bass player.

That was Ramblin’ Bluegrass, Larry Sparks & The Lonesome Ramblers’ national bluegrass debut and, looking back, it was just as forward thinking and influential as that NGR album.

Where NGR gleefully broke the rules, Sparks bent them. The singer-guitarist came up in the rough-and-tumble bluegrass bars of Southwest Ohio, where he would sing displaced Kentuckians back home after a day on the assembly lines of Frigidaire, NCR and Fisher Body. Those honky tonks turned out some of the greatest names in bluegrass – Red Allen, The Osborne Brothers, Frank Wakefield, Roy Lee Centers. And Larry Sparks. Sparks got his big break with Ralph Stanley, replacing his late brother Carter. He’s still got that Carter Stanley-style lonesomeness in his voice. But he also developed a hard-edged, bluesy lead guitar style and became a master at classic country music (check out his album of Hank Williams songs on County). And whatever he does, he does it with absolute authority and real soul.

He also has a finely-tuned ear for great songs. No other bluegrasser of his generation has so many signature songs – “John Deere Tractor,” “It’s Too Late to Walk the Floor,’” “A Face in the Crowd,”  “I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages,” “Tennessee 1949” – it’s a long list.

And his sound, combining a deep sense of tradition with a modern viewpoint has served him – and the hundreds of neo-traditional bluegrass bands that came after him – very well.

Dozens of albums later, his 2011 release, Almost Home, his Rounder debut, mixes fine new songs (“Blue Mountain Melody”) with classic country (Hank Locklin’s “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On”) and hard-driving gospel (“Somebody Touched Me”).

Back when Sparks released that first Starday album, the rest of bluegrass seemed to be heading full tilt into a wimpier version of what NGR was doing, doing rock and pop songs with a bluegrass touch, trading the timeless drive of Scruggs-style banjo for the fad of frilly chromatic licks.  And unlike NGR’s hard-edged, funky bluegrass jams,  other young bands aimed for a commercial, soft-rock, country-pop sound.

Instead, Sparks stood his ground, emulating his idols, singing with passion and power and keeping the sound and feel of first-generation bluegrass alive in the ‘70s.

Through the years, that never changed. That flame still burns today. Nov. 19, Larry Sparks brings his lonesome sound down to the Volcano Room.

Opening that day in the cave will be one of the grandchildren of NGR. Mikdrive is a hot new band out of Austin that features mandolin and fiddle champ Dennis Ludiker with equally accomplished multi-instrumentalists Noah Jeffries and Brian Beken and bassist Matt Mefford (who played with Beken and Ludiker in the South Austin Jug Band). Milkdrive has been causing a ruckus with exciting live shows (including Music City Roots) and their 2011, made-in-Nashville studio debut, Road From Home.

Don’t miss this one, folks. The future of bluegrass may depend on it.

 - Larry Nager

“That ain’t bluegrass”

I was sitting in the Nashville Convention Center ballroom for  the IBMA Fan Fest a few days back, when those words came hissing from the row behind me.

Alison Krauss was onstage, doing one of  her unearthly beautiful ballads, accompanied by the guitars of Dan Tyminski and Ron Block.

From the exaggeratedly cantankerous tone, I at first thought that it had to be a joke. But apparently not, even though AKUS has had that sound for more than 20 years. Of course, when Block hoisted his Mastertone for some straight-ahead banjo-driven ‘grass on the next song, it stopped the hisser dead for the rest of their show.

Never mind that Alison’s roots are deep in traditional bluegrass and fiddle music. You can read more about that in my profile of her and the band in the current issue of Bluegrass Unlimited (www.bluegrassmusic.,com).

But the real answer is that, nowadays, of course, that is bluegrass and has been since the late ‘60s, when folks like The Osborne Brothers and The Country Gentlemen were bringing new songs, songwriters and instruments into Bill Monroe’s music.

Lately, more and more bands are following that same path, mixing hard-driving bluegrass with other material, as band members change instruments and drop the banjo to change moods.

 New Found Road is one of the best young bands doing this, as they proved at their most recent BGU show, when the power went out and mandolinist Joe Booher played a solo jam that led into the very apropos “Ain’t No Sunshine,” perfect for the (temporarily) pitch-black Volcano Room.

Oct. 22, Mountain Heart, another BGU favorite, and another versatile band with a very entertaining case of schizophrenia, returns to Cumberland Caverns.

Mountain Heart’s gone through its share of changes since winning the IBMA Emerging Artist Award back in 1999. Its ranks have included hot pickers like mandolinist Adam Steffey, now with the Box Cars, and a couple of guitar wizards named Clay – Hess (now with Sierra Hull) and Jones.

The current lineup includes the virtuoso fiddling of Jim Van Cleve, the driving, funky banjo of Barry Abernathy, hot mandolin from Aaron Ramsey, blazing lead guitar by Jake Stargel and the rock-solid upright bass of Jason Moore. But  singer, guitarist and keyboardist Josh Shilling is the band’s secret weapon, giving Mountain Heart a whole new sound when he trades his flattop for a keyboard and belts out Southern rock tunes like the Allmans’ “Whipping Post” For everybody but those purists who treat young bluegrass bands like trespassing kids (“Hey, get off my ‘grass!”), it’s a change-up that really works.

Mountain Heart has been keeping busy since they last rode the Willy’s Jeep with Wally down to the Volcano Room Stage, spinning records on WSM with their “That Just Happened” show (you can find it archived at WSMonline.com), showcasing at this month’s American Music Association Festival and even showing up on cans of Vietti Chili (“Have you seen this band?”).

But most of all, they are a great live act, so be there when Mountain Heart goes subterranean at the October Bluegrass Underground.

Opening the show will be  The Westbound Rangers, a young Nashville band on the cutting-edge of old-time music.  

Larry Nager

This month, as Bill Monroe turns 100 and we get ready for the 2011 IBMA World of Bluegrass Week (starting Sept. 26) , a whole lot of people are asking,  “What’s the future of bluegrass?”

 It’s a question that’s almost as old as the music itself. Which, of course, isn’t really very old. It was December 8, 1945, just 4 years and a day after Pearl Harbor, that Bill Monroe stood onstage at the Ryman with Lester Flatt Earl Scruggs, Chubby wise and Howard “Cedric Rainwater” Watts and introduced a new music to Grand Ole Opry listeners.

Opry pioneer Uncle Dave Macon watched Scruggs change just about everything he thought he knew about the banjo and could only respond, “Yeah, but he ain’t a damn bit funny.” It was a brave new world.

In the ‘70s, during the first big progressive-bluegrass movement, the future of bluegrass looked like leisure suits, electric basses, soft-rock songs and noodling chromatic banjo players. But thanks to that great JD Crowe and the New South album with Skaggs, Rice and Douglas, it was back to the future, as contemporary songs and arrangements mixed with classic Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe material driven by that all-powerful Scruggs-rooted Crowe banjo.

Today of course, there are lots of  futures for bluegrass. from hard-driving young traditionalists to folks using bluegrass as an ingredient in a whole new kind of stew.

This month’s Bluegrass Underground artist and banjo explorer Ryan Cavanaugh is firmly in the latter camp. Ever since Bela Fleck showed there was not only a new way to play and feature the banjo, there was a huge audience for it, other great players have followed, like Switzerland’s Jens Kruger and Nashville’s own Scott Vestal, a man equally at home driving a band Scruggs-style or reaching beyond boundaries.

Sept. 24, the future of bluegrass comes to Cumberland Caverns with cutting-edge picker Cavanaugh and his No Man’s Land band.

Cavanaugh tore the roof off the Loveless Café a few months back on Music City Roots. Like Bela Fleck (who introduces his new banjo concerto with the Nashville Symphony on Sept. 22-24), Cavanaugh frames his banjo in a new setting, avoiding the traditional bluegrass lineup for a jazz-fusion rhythm section of electric bass, drums and keyboards. Discovered by jazz-fusion guitarist John McLaughlin in 2006, Cavanaugh honed his jazz chops for years, touring the world with former Miles Davis saxophonist Bill Evans.

Cavanaugh, who’s won all the usual festival banjo contests, sees his music as a continuation of jazz tradition, when the early days of the music featured tenor and plectrum banjos driving the rhythm sections. That was the sound Earl Scruggs heard on  the original version of “Farewell Blues” before turning it into a bluegrass standard.

But Cavanaugh isn’t looking to take the banjo back to 1925 or put it in a contemporary version of classic jazz like recent National Folk Festival performer Don Vappie and his Creole Jazz Serenaders. Instead, he’s the next step in the ongoing evolution of the banjo. And despite what the governor of Texas may say, there are no gaps in Cavanaugh’s evolutionary theories. In his hands, the banjo grooves and rocks and swings and goes places no 5-string has ever gone before. He may be 333 feet below sea level in the Volcano Room, but come to Bluegrass Underground this month and Ryan Cavanaugh and No Man’s Land will convince you that a banjo can fly.

As we get ready to celebrate the 100^th birthday of Bill Monroe, The Father of Bluegrass, in September, it got me thinking about all those other bluegrass titles – Jimmy Martin, the King of Bluegrass; Rhonda Vincent, the Queen of Bluegrass, and so on.

To that list, I’d like to add one more: Dale Ann Bradley, Queen of Bluegrass Soul.

There is no more expressive, emotional singer in bluegrass today. From her days with the Coon Creek Girls to her uniformly great solo albums, Dale Ann always gets to the heart of a song, to that emotional pivot point that resonates most deep and true. You believe this woman’s every note, every word, every breath. 

Now, bluegrass fans have known this for a very long time. That’s why she pulled off the unique triple play of winning three IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year awards in a row – 2007, 2008 and 2009. But even for people who don’t like bluegrass (if such a creature exists), there’s a lot to like about Dale Ann Bradley.

Raised in Eastern Kentucky, she’s got the mountain roots to pull off Jean Ritchie’s coal mining ballad, “The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore,” but she can take a folkish country song like “Going Gone” and make you forget Kathy Mattea ever sang it.

I’d been a fan of Dale Ann’s for a long time before we sat down in the spring of 2009 for the interview for her Bluegrass Unlimited cover story. She’d just gotten back from a festival/workshop in Alaska and was seriously mosquito-bitten and jet-lagged, But she gave me all the time I needed, and as we sat talking for hours, her love of the music, of making a living as a musician and being part of the bluegrass community, just beamed out of her.

She was raised in Bell County, Kentucky, took up guitar at 14, and within a few years was playing in local bands. One of them, Back Porch Grass, made it all the way to the regional finals in Lexington, where she met the New Coon Creek Girls. Five years later, they asked her to audition for a job as mandolin player. Which, not being much of a mandolin picker, she didn’t get. But she did land a regular gig singing at the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, where she honed her singing and guitar playing and landed that position with the New Coon Cook Girls a few years later. It was a fine band, but Dale Ann’s voice would stand out in any crowd, and a solo career was only a matter of time.

Her latest CD is Don’t Turn Your Back, and it’s about time for another one. We need more music from singers like Dale Ann Bradley. Like she told me in that BU interview, her life and where she comes from are part of every note she sings, and that’s a big difference between her and today’s bluegrass whiz kids.

“The kids today in bluegrass, it’s a wonderful energy, but it’s a different energy,” she said. “And I think people my age might be the last of that generation that really lived those songs hardcore.”

If you want the whole story you can find it on the Bluegrass Unlimited web site: http://bluegrassmusic.com/content/2009/feature/dale-ann-bradley-wont-back-down/

But if you want the complete Dale Ann Bradley experience, head to Bluegrass Underground Aug. 20, as she and her band return to the mosquito-free Volcano Room.

As if that wasn’t enough reason to head to McMinnville, Chris Jones & the Night Drivers share the bill. Chris, of course, is the Multi-tasking King of Bluegrass. He sings, plays guitar, writes songs, hosts workshops, has built a sizable web presence and is an IBMA Award-winning Broadcaster of the Year for his Sirius satellite radio show on Bluegrass Junction. That same year, 2007, he took Song of the Year honors for co-writing the title cut of The Infamous Stringdusters’ Fork in the Road. That double play makes him the only person to win performer and non-performer IBMA awards in a single year.

He leads a fine band that includes fellow Renaissance man Jon Weisberger — bassist, IBMA Award-winning journalist, one of Nashville’s busiest songwriters and, this month, he’ll take over for me doing interviews for WSM’s Bluegrass Underground radio show. I hope he asks himself the tough questions.

Larry Nager

They call Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver the School of Bluegrass and it’s a fitting moniker. Many of today’s top pickers and singers carry a Quicksilver diploma, including Doyle’s longtime bassist Jamie Dailey of Daily & Vincent fame, who share’s Doyle’s dean’s list with banjo ace Terry Baucom as well as members of Ricky Skaggs’ Kentucky Thunder, Mountain Heart and IIIrd Tyme Out.

Their styles cover a lot of ground, but one thing they all agree on- they’re all better musicians A.D. (After Doyle).

And that’s not surprising, since the singer/mandolinist’s resume includes playing just about every instrument and being part of many of the best, most influential bands in bluegrass.

He played with Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, starting out on banjo before getting to play his signature mandolin. I have a treasured reel-to-reel tape given to me by Red Allen from when he was playing with J.D. Crowe’s Kentucky Mountain Boys with Doyle on mandolin and Bobby Slone on bass. They were playing Lexington, KY’s legendary Red Slipper, the Holiday Inn lounge that became hallowed ground for bluegrass fans thanks to J.D.’s longstanding house band gig there.

Then there was Doyle’s part in the Country Gentlemen, where his smooth tenor and mandolin were integral parts of such great CG albums as The Award Winning (Rebel) and the band’s Vanguard LPs (now available on one must-have disc, featuring very young Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas).

Of course, Doyle was part of the core of the Bluegrass Album Band with JD and Tony Rice. The group played state-of-the-art traditional bluegrass and, through a series of great Rounder albums, inspired a new generation to abandon rock-influenced progressive ‘grass and “play it like it was meant to be played.”

And of course, there’s Quicksilver.

Hearing Doyle and Quicksilver move from their unique spin on traditional and contemporary bluegrass to their trademark a cappella gospel was a memorable experience back when they played Cumberland Caverns in 2009. The gospel was especially powerful in that dramatic, timelessly stark setting of the caves.

When I do the interviews for WSM’s Bluegrass Underground show, the conversations almost always turn to how, even though the artists play hundreds of dates a year, BGU is special, it’s one they’ll remember. Well, even after seeing a few dozen BGU shows, hearing Doyle and Quicksilver do their a cappella songs in the Volcano Room made for some of those “cold chills” moments I’ll never forget.

  As good as bluegrass is today, those moments are still all too rare. If you want to see one of the all-time greats still in his prime, don’t miss Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver. The School of Bluegrass is in session.

Becky Schlegel will be opening the show for Doyle. Originally from the prairies of South Dakota, she found a home in bluegrass as one of the new breed of singer-songwriters, earning rave reviews both as a writer and performer.

And if that’s not enough to get you down to Bluegrass Underground in these most dogged days of summer, just remember — it’s always 56 degrees in the Volcano Room. With that and those cold chills from Quicksilver, you’ll want to pack a jacket.

~Larry Nager

Bluegrass can be a time machine. Lots of great contemporary bands have shown their love for traditional bluegrass by trying as hard as they can to replicate the Golden Age, right down to the hats, string ties and two-tone shoes.

There’s nothing wrong with bluegrass re-enactors. But as someone once said, “It’s OK to look back, as long as you don’t stare.”

For me, the best contemporary bluegrass has a firm foundation in lessons learned from the First Generation – Monroe, Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Reno & Smiley – but acknowledges that it is 2011, after all, not 1951.

That’s what makes this month’s Bluegrass Underground lineup a must-see – two great bands that draw on past greatness without being boxed in by it.

Cumberland Caverns is a year-round 56 degrees, but the June 5 headliner promises to warm things up. Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper is driven by the five-time IBMA winning fiddler, and if you’ve ever seen him play, you know why the fiddle is called “the Devil’s instrument,” because his seems to throw off sparks. He leads an all-star band that includes bassist Marshall Wilborn, banjo master Charlie Cushman (a rare picker who draws from Don Reno as well as Earl Scruggs), mandolinist Jesse Brock and guitarist Tom Adams. They’re latest is Leavin’ Town, and it’s got everything that made me fall in love with bluegrass in the first place — those high, lonesome harmonies, great songs, flashy pickin’ and drive, drive, drive.

Opening the show is Newfound Road, a band from Southwestern Ohio, an area that gave us some of the best traditional bluegrass, from Larry Sparks to Red Allen, Frank Wakefield and Moon and Joe Mullins. These guys carry that torch, but singer Tim Shelton has an ear for great songs and an uncanny ability to make them all into bluegrass. Their latest, a live album cut at East Tennessee’s Down Home Pickin’ Parlor includes, along with bluegrass standards like the Stanleys’ “Lonesome River,” Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” and a jam band breakout of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine.”  Quite a stretch, but these guys make it all sound just like Newfound Road.

June 4 will be a real hot one at Bluegrass Underground. It’s a good thing the Volcano Room is fireproof.

- Larry Nager

It’s shaping up as a groundbreaking year for Bluegrass Underground. There’s that new deal with PBS, of course, but there’s also the amazingly eclectic music lineup, the complete range of what can be called bluegrass in 2011.

With Dr. Ralph Stanley’s March appearance, BGU brought one of the genuine founding fathers of bluegrass deeper than ever before. April gave us some jam-band flavor with The Emmitt-Nershi Band.

Saturday, May 14, there’s glamour underground with Hillbilly Goddess Alecia Nugent, along with the fresh-cut sounds of Greensky Bluegrass.

From the hard-rock traditionalism of Dr. Stanley to Alecia’s more mainstream country approach is quite a stretch, but her Carl Jackson-produced Hillbilly Goddess (Rounder) manages the incredibly delicate balance of radio-friendly polish and satisfying bluegrass soul. And unlike some of her sisters in mainstream country, Alecia isn’t just another pretty Pro-Tools product. She brings it to the stage with great vocals and a genuinely engaging presence.  Even Dr. Stanley would approve.

If you were to mispronounce the name of Saturday’s opening band, you might think Greensky Bluegrass hails from the Eastern Bloc. But they’re from Bluegrass Country. Not Kentucky, but Kalamazoo, the Michigan town where all those great pre-World War II Gibson mandolins, banjos and guitars were made. 

Despite their playful name, these five guys are serious enough about their music to have taken First Place at the 2006 Telluride Band Contest. Their next big show in the area is next month’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in nearby Manchester.

But it’s a lot cheaper to see them Saturday in much cleaner, more comfortable conditions with actual restrooms and reasonably priced concessions. And remember, it never rains on Bluegrass Underground.

- Larry Nager

April 23, it’s back to the future at Bluegrass Underground with acoustic Appalachian music from two very different space-time continuums. This month’s headliner, The Emmitt-Nershi Band, is as forward thinking as any bluegrass-rooted band can be. Fronted by two of the leaders of the jam grass movement – Leftover Salmon’s Drew Emmitt and String Cheese Incidental Bill Nershi – the group is the next step in that genre’s evolution, blending tradition and innovation in a way that respects the music’s boundaries, while not being boxed in by them. You can hear that in their latest project, New Country Blues.

Then again, maybe the theme of this month’s Bluegrass Underground is “Six Degrees of Dock Boggs.” Boggs was the Appalachian banjo songster whose “Oh Death” was covered by Ralph Stanley for O Brother (and the song that provided one of the most dramatic moments of Dr. Stanley’s March BGU show). Boggs also wrote the even more popular “Country Blues,” covered by such notables as BGU favorite Tim O’Brien and the song that inspired the title track of Emmitt-Nershi’s new CD. We’ll ask them about that in the interview portion of their show.

But Dock Boggs also seems to be prime inspiration for opening act Frank Fairfield.

As Emmitt-Nershi head into the future, singer/guitarist/banjo picker/fiddler Fairfield is the cutting-edge of retro, heading into the past faster than a steam-powered aereoplane.  Fairfield is a 1930s Library of Congress field recording come to life, with a musical approach so un-slick and old-timey he makes fellow Los Angeles traditionalist Gillian Welch sound like Lady Gaga.

It should make for a great combination, with the newer kid, Fairfield, opening the day with a set of the kind of music that formed the roots of the traditional bluegrass that, in turn, inspired Sam Bush and the rest of the first generation of newgrass revolutionaries, who of course, led to the jamgrass movement that veteran artists Emmitt and Nershi helped lead.

It’s kind of like the BGU version of the old song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.” Back to the future indeed.

- Larry Nager

New Series To Premier Nationwide this Fall 

PBS On Board For Musical Adventure

NASHVILLE, TN. – March 5th, 2011 – Organizers of the acclaimed radio-concert series BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND today announced a television partnership with PBS to bring the unique “musical adventure” series to national audiences. The series will air the first of 12 episodes beginning in mid-September, 2011. BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND is taped inside the Volcano Room, deep within Cumberland Caverns near McMinnville, TN.

The BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND concert series has aired weekly since 2008 on country music’s flagship radio station, 650 WSM-AM and in syndication. But now a partnership of BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND creator Todd Mayo’s Loblolly Ventures, WCTE-DTV (PBS), and Emmy award-winning producer Todd Jarrell has developed the series for national distribution on PBS.

 “The goal for BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND television has always been a national slot on PBS and we’re pleased that PBS is as excited as we are about the series. BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND presents the two best cultural exports of Tennessee:  our rich, musical culture and our abiding natural beauty,” says event creator Todd Mayo, president of Loblolly Ventures. “The majestic quality of the cave and the diverse authenticity of the musicians who comprise Season One combine to make this series an immersive musical adventure.”

 As Mayo puts it, this series is, “A little bit Bluegrass, a little bit Underground,” as performing artists run the spectrum of Bluegrass-Americana-Roots music including Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Darrell Scott, 18 South, Mike Farris and The McCrary Sisters, Cherryholmes, Justin Townes Earle, Mountain Heart, Will Hoge, John Cowan, Monte Montgomery and The Farewell Drifters.

 This exciting and eclectic live concert series is recorded live to tape in High Definition by Cookeville’s PBS member station WCTE-DTV. Audio is rendered in 5.1 Surround Sound by Hugh Johnson, who also serves as Vince Gill’s audio engineer. Concert lighting is designed by Allen Branton, whose clients have include the recent Hope for Haiti special, as well as Michael Jackson, U2, Madonna, The Who, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and many more. Directing is Jim Yockey, whose television career in live music events includes work with Frank Sinatra, Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris and the Judds, to name just a few.

 For Todd Jarrell, producer for BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND television, this combination of creative talent promises audiences,  “a full-on presentation of one of the most visually amazing and acoustically true venues there is—bar none.” Together, Jarrell and WCTE (Cookeville, TN-PBS) have collaborated to present Jarrell’s award-winning films onto the national PBS system including the TREE SAFARI series, CRANK: Darkness on the Edge of Town, and TUBA U: Basso Profundo.

 ”We are so proud to be presenting BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND,” says WCTE CEO Becky Magura. “This program will be a tremendous asset and a welcome addition to WCTE’s current musical offerings such as JAMMIN’ AT HIPPIE JACK’S, the Bryon Symphony Orchestra’s BACKSTAGE series and the annual SMITHVILLE JAMBOREE.”

 In announcing that Underwriters of the television series will include the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, Nissan and The City of McMinnville, Producer Todd Jarrell adds, “When they say on PBS that ‘This program has been made possible by…,’ it is literally quite true. We could not produce this series without our sponsors support and to them we are truly grateful.”

 Discovered in 1810, the 32-mile long Cumberland Caverns system is a registered U.S. National Natural Landmark, attracting thousands of visitors from around the world each year. The subterranean descent takes visitors past an underground pool and waterfall to the 500-seat natural amphitheatre carved by water over 3.5 million years. The Volcano Room lies about 600 feet inside the main opening of the cavern.

 While touring the cavern during a family vacation, Mayo was struck by the value of the Volcano Room as a top music venue.  He and wife Jen formed their production company, Loblolly Ventures, and BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND was born.

 Mayo took his cavern-recorded music program to WSM AM 650, the most consequential and influential broadcaster in the history of country music and an icon of Nashville. WSM wisely scheduled BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND to air on Saturday evenings just prior to the Grand Ole Opry, the longest-running show in broadcasting and a landmark of American culture.

BLUEGRASS UNDERGROUND tickets are available in advance or at the event.  Upcoming shows include Ralph Stanley on March 12^th and Emmitt-Nershi Band on April 23^rd.