Hooray for Bluegrass!!

Category: News

While the Country Music Hall of Fame may not get around to even announcing its inductees for 2020, the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) isn't waiting around to see whether or not they'll have in-person or "virtual" awards this year.  

In addition to the nominees for the IBMA awards for this year, the bluegrass organization has announced the inductees for the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame for 2020.

It is my absolute delight to introduce you to the three new inductees:

J.T. Gray:  the man who owns this little place in Nashville called the Station Inn.  He's supposedly been offered seven figures to sell the club that'll hold, maybe, 200 people (many fewer with social distancing in place), but he refuses.  With all the trendy condos and bars sprouting up around the Station Inn, it's beginning to look like Bugs Bunny's home in the cartoon No Parking Hare.  But it's still there, and it'll be there when COVID-19 vanishes.  Gray is a hero among venue owners: he loves the music more than the money, and anyone who's ever performed at the Station Inn will tell you they're treated like family.  The customers will tell you the same thing.

The Johnson Mountain Boys:  I never thought it would happen.  The guys who stuck out like sore thumbs with traditional bluegrass in the days of the "progressive" bluegrass are going into the Hall of Fame.  Deservedly so, too.  Loaded with individual talent (with Dudley Connell's stunning voice leading the way), the JMB made traditional bluegrass cool again.  

New Grass Revival:  speaking of "progressive" bluegrass, the "Father of Newgrass" Sam Bush and his friends in the New Grass Revival are also being honored this year.  Another band with a boatload of talent (look at the solo careers of Bush, John Cowan, and Béla Fleck), the New Grass Revival did remarkable things in the world of bluegrass, including incorporating other genres but still remaining unmistakably bluegrass.  

Hooray for bluegrass!!!  And congratulations to the new inductees, who are all richly deserving of bluegrass music's highest honor!