Pete's Bluegrass Weblog - or Blog

Subjects: bluegrass, old time music, and vaguely related items. You are invited to join in, as you wish. E-mail them to us and we'll add your comments, which are very welcome.

   Yesterday was the 128th anniversary of General George Armstrong Custer's defeat by the Lakota Souix at the Battle of the Little Big Horn river. As was often the case in those times, a song or ballad was composed shortly thereafter, describing the event. Peter and the VLB discovered and recorded their own arrangement of this song, "Custer", a sample of which can be found here. Naturally, the entire CD, "Tough And Wild" - which is almost ready to go lead (pending just a few more purchases) - is on sale on this website.
G. A. Custer

   Last weekend, I visited with Byron Berline and Dan Crary to discuss a forthcoming CD project. Here they are, entertaining a crowd at the Huck Finn BG Festival in Victorvill, CA - former home of Roy Rodgers (and Trigger!) Dan is expounding on something or other, as is his wont when he's not actually pickin',
while Byron listens with rapt attention...

Byron Berline // Dan Crary   

    What's the saying? ... "It never rains, but it pours..." After about a 7-8 year drought in any major press coverage, we get two "cover" articles in two weeks! Leah Etling from the Santa Barbara News-Press visited with me in Los Olivos last week and brought forth an article in the Valley Living section of the paper this past Friday. Click on the photo below to see the entire article in .GIF format.I'm sure that soon, I'll be driving around in my own stretch limo, taking it down to the Grange Hall to set up the folding chairs for my shows. (Volunteers always welcome!).

Peter in front of Los Olivos Grange Hall - R. Mondanaldo

For further info on our show May15th, go here.

    Back in 1973, I remember reading a fascinating article in the UNESCO Courrier by Viet Namese folklorist Tran Van Khê titled "Musical Imperialism". I recently found a faded xerox copy of that article and have posted it in the IDEAS section of our website. While you may not agree with all the statements made by Tran in the article, I think you'll find his work connection the life of people and their music of some interest.    [P'ip'a]
       CLICK HERE to go directly to the article.

      A couple of weeks ago, we had a vist from Jim Bulckey and Eva Van Prooyen, the publisher and editor in chief of the Montecito Journal and the Santa Ynez Valley Journal. We drank a glass of wine and discussed the newspaper bizz, music, and LIG ("life in general").

My wife, Francine told the news team a little about her musical (& other!) experiences in the world of what I call "city music". Francine hadn't heard of Bill Monroe or The Carter Family before we met, but she did hang out with musical theater great Frederick Loewe, Frank Sinatra, and similar folks in years past. At any rate, Jim wrote a very nice piece on th einterview, which is now out in this month's edition of the SYVJ. For those not close enough to pick up a copy, the article is reprinted on Francine's website - BlueDalmatian.com, and makes interesting reading for anyone with tastes broad enough for a range of musical types, city and country.

   The Very Lonesome Boys will be playing a public show next month at the Los Olivos Grange Hall in "downtown" Los Olivos, California in the Santa Ynez Valley. (The reason I put downtown in quotes is that LO is essentially one block in any direction, North, South, East, or West.)

Public performances are usually the most fun for us, since we get to see and chat with fans, but we're often called upon for special events, weddings, wine tastings, etc. Here's a special show we did for retiring Santa Barbara Arborist Dan Condon last year in Santa Barbara's oldest public park, Alameda Park.
Guest guitarist Tom Corbett is helping us out, and by the looks of things, we are doing a very, very lonesome song indeed. [Frank Franks photo] Unfortunately, the 12,000 screaming fans are just outside the margins of this photo.

"When you want genuine music - music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose - when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!

-- Mark Twain     

We had a fine show at the Los Olivos Grange Hall last month. The Very Lonesome Boys were in fine form, and we were joined by fiddlers Paul Lee and Jim Wimmer, which gave us a fiddle trio on several numbers. We'll hope for the chance to play a lot more music
for you in 2004.