Bluegrass and Me

Another pointer from Scoble is WDVX, a “a grass roots radio station broadcasting from a fourteen-foot camper in the Fox Inn Campground in Clinton, Tennessee.”

Ever since I worked hawking the Hamilton Spectator to the drunken masses at the Carlisle Bluegrass Festival in the late-1970s, I’ve had a confused relationship with bluegrass music.

When you are 12 years old and thrust into a heady pot and alcohol-fueled campground filled with wild bluegrass fans twice your age and more, with a mission of selling them a special commemorative edition of your local newspaper, it’s easy to develop biases.

I ignored bluegrass as much as possible after those days, until a weird experience in the Green Mountains of Vermont in the early 1990s when the radio in my Ford F-100 pickup truck tuned in an “all bluegrass all the time” radio station that had no announcers: just bluegrass. All the time. I took this to be a message from God, and this marked a gradual opening of my mind to bluegrass music.

This opening was quickened by the gift of A Celebration of the American Farm from my friends at The Old Farmer’s Almanac: there are some great bluegrass tracks on that album.

And so my mind was well primed for WDVX tonight: I’ve spent the last 12 hours listening in over the Internet. I am addicted.

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