Plus: Celebrates A Successful Year-to-Date including an All-Star Tribute Night in Los Angeles Honoring
Jerry Garcia; Launches BGS-UK to Cater to Euro Roots Music Fans, and more!
The BGS Podcast Network Announces THREE new programs:
To their existing staples The BGS Radio Hour, The String hosted by Craig Havighurst, and the now-archived classicHangin’ & Sangin’, The BGS Podcast Network adds three new roots music-centered podcast to their roster:
The Shift List, hosted by Chris Jacobs, is a weekly conversation with the world’s top chefs about the music that fills their kitchens, restaurants and recipes. The 2018 season features chefs from Los Angeles, Copenhagen, London, and beyond– including Noma alums Rosio Sanchez (Hija de Sanchez) and Christian Puglisi (Baest, Ralae), Matt Orlando (Amass), Jessica Largey (Simone, Manresa), and Naved Nasir and Shamil Thakrar (chef and founder of Dishoom). Listen to a teaser here. The first two episodes will be released on September 17 with subsequent episodes released each week. The Shift List podcast is a revitalized version of the original BGS written column.
Premiering October 1, The Show on the Road — produced and hosted by Dustbowl Revival frontman Zach Lupetin — is a conversation with fellow artists about the ins and outs of musical life whilst, as the name implies, on the road (with some meandering conversational tangents to boot). Guests include Mandolin Orange, Shook Twins, Lindsay Lou, and more.
And premiering this fall, an exciting limited-run series titled The Breakdown from BGS and BGS-UK contributor Emma John, along with The Lonely Heartstring Band’s Patrick M’Gonigle. Together, they do the ultimate deep dive into the bluegrass back catalog. Over six episodes, the pair peel back the layers of a genre that’s not just hard-driving and high lonesome, but also bizarre, compelling, and full of completely mad stories.
Podcasts can be streamed and downloaded at https://thebluegrasssituation.
3rd Annual Shout & Shine Grows to New Venue, Benefits Two Roots Music Non-profits:
This year’s Shout & Shine: A Celebration of Diversity in Bluegrass will honor the connection and cross-pollination between blues, bluegrass, and their offshoots and will take place on Monday, Sept. 24, at 6 p.m. at the North Carolina Museum of History Daniels Auditorium, at the very beginning of IBMA’s World of Bluegrass events in Raleigh. Presented by BGS and PineCone, Shout & Shine is the first event of its kind at the weeklong bluegrass business conference and festival. Born in 2016 as a direct response to the NC General Assembly’s controversial “bathroom bill,” HB2, Shout & Shine’s third year has grown and refocused its mission on highlighting and reincorporating these voices not only at the showcase, but throughout the week-long convention and festival. This year’s theme will be built upon the connection between North Carolina’s Piedmont blues pickers and bluegrass, pairing musicians from the Music Maker Relief Foundation with the best and brightest of bluegrass to illustrate that vernacular music from Appalachia and its offshoot genres would not exist in their current forms without people of color, African Americans, African slaves, and the influence of the music they created. For the first time, the showcase is a ticketed, sit-down concert that will benefit both the IBMA Trust Fund and the Music Maker Relief Foundation.
Headlining the year is Che Apalache, a four-man string band from Argentina founded by fiddler and songwriter Joe Troop that was recently featured in an All Things Considered piece which aired earlier this week. Listen here. Also performing at Shout & Shine are Farmville, NC-based Glorifying Vine Sisters, a sister act who have sung together for 50 years, sharing their truth: that gospel music is the heart and soul of American music. Amythyst Kiah, a professed Southern Gothic songster based in Johnson City, TN, returns to the showcase for the first time since its inaugural year, 2016, bringing back her commanding stage presence and raw and powerful vocals. And, no stranger to the IBMA world, 2016 Male Vocalist of the Year, Danny Paisley will bring his reverent and exciting take on traditional country music and bluegrass to the event in collaboration with yet-to-be-announced blues virtuosos from Music Maker’s stellar lineup.
Shout & Shine is made possible by partners the International Bluegrass Music Association, Music Maker Relief Foundation, and the North Carolina Museum of History and the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Shout & Shine 2018 presenting sponsors are the Raleigh Convention Center, the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau, and The Press House.
Tickets are $25 and available by following this link: shoutandshine.
An Exciting and Groundbreaking Year-to-Date:
2018 has proven to be both busy and productive for BGS as they continue to grow and develop their coverage of the entirety of the roots community, tracing diversity and depth in its past, present, and future, providing a platform for artists who have been largely been overlooked and underrepresented in the past, whilst also remaining the #1 hub for today’s roots music, lifestyle, and cultural scenes. The BGS Radio Hour has expanded into new markets and is now distributed on NPR and independent radio stations on both coasts and on its home station of WMOT Roots Radio.
Earlier this year, BGS presented an all-star tribute show at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, working with the estate of Jerry Garcia to celebrate the depth and continual influence of his broad musical impact and appeal. The evening built on the success of a similar, 2016 concert that tributed Linda Ronstadt. Guests for both of these jaw-dropping shows included Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Aaron Neville, Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, Stephen Malkmus, Grace Potter, Sam Bush, Lucius, Sara and Sean Watkins, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Josh Ritter, Amos Lee, and many others. Read more about the Jerry Garcia celebration here.
Other BGS events in 2018 include MerleFest Midnight Jam, a BGS-curated stage at their very first international event, The Long Road festival in Birmingham, UK, collaborations with the newly revamped Huck Finn Jubilee, as well as Winter Wondergrass, AMA-UK, their second year presenting the BGS Stage in the Big Bourbon Bar at Bourbon & Beyond, plus presence at roots music conferences AMA 2018, IBMA’s World of Bluegrass, and Folk Alliance International.
More notables include a brand new, rebuilt and re-organized website with a completely fresh user interface, aesthetics, and functionality, plus the launch of BGS’ first international platform, BGS-UK — a resource and community for fans and readers in the UK and EU (BGS’s second largest international markets behind Canada) creating custom content and laying the groundwork for presenting more shows and tours in London and beyond. Stateside, BGS continues to present shows and tours across the country, including their first BGS Presents at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado with Yonder Mountain String Band and Infamous Stringdusters with the Earls of Leicester and Horeshoes & Hand Grenades on August 4. Continuing at Red Rocks, BGS will present Railroad Earth and Fruition on August 18. Tickets are available here. Many, many more BGS Presents shows have dazzled audiences across the country, from NYC’s Symphony Space and Chicago’s Schubas to LA stalwarts like the Greek, the Wiltern, and Hotel Cafe. More BGS Presents dates are added weekly, with upcoming 2018 shows featuring artists such as Punch Brothers, Billy Strings, and the Devil Makes Three.