Sunday, July 23, 2006
Bluegrass stakes out space in the blogosphere
Ralph Berrier
Riffs, the regional music scene as heard by The Roanoke Times reporter Ralph Berrier, will appear weekly on Sundays.
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Bluegrass grows in cyberspace. John Lawless and Brance Gillihan are scattering the seeds.
Lawless and Gillihan are a pair of accomplished bluegrass musicians who also know a thing or two about the business side of the music. Like a couple of artists who partner to make a duet album, the two joined forces a year ago to launch the Bluegrass Blog, a compendium of news, notes and interviews about contemporary bluegrass music.
Just like musicians who play music for the love of it, Lawless and Gillihan certainly didn't become bloggers for the money.
"Brance and I have spent most of the last year coming up with great ideas to occupy our time and not generate much revenue," Lawless joked.
This idea, though, appears to be catching on. When it comes to the blogosphere, bluegrass is certainly a niche market. As it approaches its first birthday at the end of this month, the Bluegrass Blog, which you will find at the easy-to-remember address thebluegrassblog.com, has attracted the attention of fans, performers, publicists and record labels.
(And just a refresher for those who don't know a blog from a barn door, the term is short for weblog, which are daily columns, essays, rants or worse about topics that range from politics to basket weaving.)
Lawless and Gillihan are on the mailing lists of most of the top bluegrass labels and artists' agents. They file daily submissions in a blog that's clean and easy to navigate.
Their best data reveal that the blog attracts about 1,000 unique visitors a day. Again, that's a straw in the Internet haystack, but it's a number that interests advertisers. Record labels, instrument manufacturers, music magazines and other bluegrass-related enterprises have jumped aboard the bluegrass blog express and kept the site profitable.
Lawless and Gillihan both know the music from an artist's and businessman's perspective. Lawless plays banjo for the Roanoke band Acoustic Endeavors and owns AcuTab Publishing, a Roanoke-based business that distributes bluegrass sheet music and instructional DVDs. Gillihan is an accomplished guitarist who owns a recording studio in Pulaski.
They both caught the "blog bug" during the 2004 election campaign, by reading political blogs on a daily basis.
"There were things out there that would make you feel great or make you angry every day," Lawless said. "It wasn't hard to figure out what people loved about them."
The technically savvy Gillihan purchased software for a blog he developed for a church youth group, then convinced Lawless that building a blog around bluegrass could be done.
A year later, the blog attracts visitors from across the globe. Fans can get up-to-date news about new albums and tours. The site also offers the Grasscast, short podcast interviews with artists that can be downloaded. Links to other bluegrass-related sites are easily accessed from the blog.
Lawless believes the Internet has helped raise the music's profile internationally in the past five years. More bands have their own Web sites, some offer downloads of songs and several artists have their own message boards. Bluegrass fans can learn what their favorite performer is up to with a few clicks.
In keeping with their philosophy of coming up with great ideas guaranteed to keep them in the red, Lawless and Gillihan are planning to expand their online offerings later this year. They plan to assist bands with online marketing and downloads. Like musicians in other genres, even bluegrass performers have seen a drop in CD sales because of downloading. Lawless and Gillihan want to help groups better manage their own online sales.
For now, the two will continue to pull together bluegrass news and post it.
"We don't want to just rewrite press releases," said Lawless, who would love to hire an additional writer for the blog at some undetermined future date. "We work hard to validate and verify information. That takes time. We have a lot of plans to expand."
when they were reading political blogs on a daily basis.
"There were things out there that would make you feel great or make you angry every day," Lawless said. "It wasn't hard to figure out what people loved about them."
The technically savvy Gillihan purchased software for a blog he developed for a church youth group, then convinced Lawless that building a blog around bluegrass could be done.
A year later, the blog attracts visitors from across the globe. Fans can get up-to-date news about new albums and tours. The site also offers the Grasscast, short podcast interviews with artists that can be downloaded. Links to other bluegrass-related sites are easily accessed from the blog.
Lawless believes the Internet has helped raise the music's profile internationally in the past five years. More bands have their own Web sites, some offer downloads of songs and several artists have their own message boards. Bluegrass fans can learn what their favorite performer is up to with a few clicks.
In keeping with their philosophy of coming up with great ideas guaranteed to keep them in the red, Lawless and Gillihan are planning to expand their online offerings later this year. They plan to assist bands with online marketing and downloads. Like musicians in other genres, even bluegrass performers have seen a drop in CD sales because of downloading. Lawless and Gillihan want to help groups better manage their own online sales.
For now, the two will continue to pull together bluegrass news and post it.
"We don't want to just rewrite press releases," said Lawless, who would love to hire an additional writer for the blog at some undetermined future date. "We work hard to validate and verify information. That takes time. We have a lot of plans to expand."
