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Kansas Public Radio has launched their fall membership drive and I'll be lending a hand for KPR's longtime support of acoustic music including bluegrass, folk, celtic, old-time and more. And yes, much of that music is mandolin rich in content.

If you listen to public radio and appreciate what it offers, please consider making a pledge when I'm on the air encouraging your fellow KPR listeners to become KPR members.

Tune into KPR's Trail Mix on Sunday, October 18 from ...

A software program may have picked the next hit song coming from your radio, and you may have no choice in the matter.

Before we discuss further, let's get one thing straight: I neither listen to, have much interest in, nor play music that will ever qualify as "hit" material. If you happen to, power to you.

Then why does this broadcast about software that predicts "hits" that appeared on NPR a few days ago boil my blood? Maybe it's because it takes something that I ...

A lot of useful features found on the Cafe's message board are simple never used.

How can well tell? Because many of these features share a common web address, and what each user sees is dependent upon their member login. We simply search the usage of those web addresses and we quickly see those that are rarely accessed. To be fair though, a lot of people may have no use for these, but unless they know, they certainly will never make use of them.

We thought it would ...

Here goes:

This is annoying.

blah blh blah

test

Over on the guitar discussion board I moderate, http://santacruzguitarplayers.com, I started a group project. I supplied the basic tracks of a song (percussion, guitar, voice) I had written and demo'd with GarageBand on my Mac. I asked the folks on the board if they might contribute some lead instrument ideas.

I was having difficulty getting a lead instrument track down on a demo for a song I had written, called "Big Valley." The idea arose from realizing I could ask ...

I'm sittin' in Big Springs, NE with only a pinch of Internet signal strength. Everything loads soooo slow, like dial-up. It gives one time to think as the process unwinds.

There are four Cafe members, I know I'll leave out a bunch, that I'd like to thank for one reason or another:

1: Mike Edgerton. I've learned the hard way that I am a very poor judgment of quality and price of old beater mandolins. I can e-mail Mike and get his opinion of a particular instrument. ...

Doyle Lawson was recently quoted saying, "I'm hearing Bill Monroe's name mentioned less and less these days, and I don't want to see that happen. He's the reason I play bluegrass and I wanted to do something to put Bill's name back out front."

The quote came in regard to a marvelous cut entitled Monroe's Mandolin from Lawson's new Lonely Street recording, and a fine cut it is.

Is Bill Monroe fading from our collective memories?

We hope not, so as we approach ...