Bluegrass and Sirius satallite radio

[Kevin Stevens]

I listen to the Sirius bluegrass channel all the time. As a relative newcomer to bluegrass, I feel like I learned most of what I know about it from that station. Perhaps it is light on the traditional bluegrass, but without the Sirius channel I probably wouldn't have had the chance to hear any of it. I don't even begin to pretend I can tell traditional bluegrass from anything else they play, but I do know I like listening to it.

Satellite radio is one of those little luxuries I would never give up, with the variety of options it offers 24/7. I could spend all my time listening to the classic rock I have listened to for 40 years, and do that a lot, but the surprising thing that Sirius did for me was to allow me to be exposed to many other types of music, bluegrass included. I don't listen to any of the country stations (yet), but do spend a lot of time in the car tuned in to bluegrass junction.

[Don Troyer]

I love Bluegrass Junction. Listen to it 10 hrs a day on my ear muff headsets. Good variety of styles. I believe bluegrass in general today would not be as popular if it were not for venues like sat. radio. it's a great outlet for the new bluegrass bands to be heard for those of us who don't go to alot of festivals and buy cds.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I'm basically with John Hamlett,as i too have many favourite musical genres ranging from Medieval,thro.to Baroque / Classical/ modern 'popular' / Trad.Jazz to Bluegrass / Old Timey. What annoys me about so many radio stations that advertise themselves as 'Bluegrass' stations,is that they rarely play any Bluegrass 'as we know & love it'.
There are many bands that use the 'trad.' Bluegrass instrumentation who don't play 'trad. Bluegrass' - 'Nickel Creek' being a good example,& while i don't care much for their current musical 'style',i could never deny that they were 'stellar' musicians ,but even they don't get much of an outing on these stations.
Sorry for repeating myself - but some folks really do think that 'Momma's Hungry Eyes' is the total enshrinement of all things Bluegrass & i suppose that they have to have their share of music that 'they like', even if we don't. As i said,there's always the OFF button,
Ivan

[Troy Mayfield]

I wouldn't mind if Sirius/XM played bluegrass or newgrass, but the bluegrass channel pretty much plays country music, but maybe that is the style of the current bluegrass music. I am one who loves to play bluegrass, but honestly, even the first generation stuff is hard to listen to for very long.
I listen to Spectrum, Faction (when the teenager is in the car) classic album rock, 40's, 50's and 60's music. I wish they still had an Americana station or an alternative country station.

[chip]

"but the bluegrass channel pretty much plays country music,"

What? I'd suggest you move your channel selector to "Outlaw Country" and some of the other "country" channels, then come back and listen to Bluegrass Junction...I think they're doing the best they can to present Bluegrass, Newgrass, and a little alternative grass to round out the format. Thanks to "Bluegrass Junction" I've found many bands I'd otherwise never heard being that California isn't the hub of acoustic instrument radio stations. At least most of the music has a banjer in it and that separates it from the country garbage being spewed out....

[sgarrity]

I listen to Bluegrass Junction and I just don't hear all of this "country music" you guys are hearing. I love traditional 'grass. Bill Monroe, Frank Wakefield, and Mike Compton wrote the book on bluegrass mandolin as far as I'm concerned. I applaud their efforts and feel pretty lucky to even have the station. Whether people like it or not, the bluegrass tent covers a lot of styles and always has. Just listen to the differences between Monroe, The Stanley Bros, Flatt & Scruggs, Jim & Jesse, Reno & Smiley, etc. Very little of what Bluegrass Junction plays I would say I don't like. And if I don't like a song it only takes about 3 minutes to get to the next one!

[rhicksnm]

I listen to Bluegrass Junction several hours a day, especially when I travel long distances in the car. I appreciate the knowledge and humor that the DJs (Jones, Luberecki, Cantrell, Black) bring to the music. I love different styles of music, but bluegrass is my favorite. I appreciate Sirius XM for hosting the channel. I recommend it all the time to people who want to hear some REAL music!

[chipotle]

I had an XM subscription for 6 years and I enjoyed most of it. XM had a great selection of stations with their own program directors, hosts and playlists. The music stations had no talk, no senseless bantor or advertising. I enjoyed the diverse music selection. Thats what they led us to believe with the satellite subscription.

After the merger with Sirius, a lot of the stations merged. Rather than having 10 channels of a specific genre from the two services, Mel conglomerated the programming. I let my subscription lapse since after the merger the stations became less of the indvidual programmers stations and more of the overall corporate structure. Much less variety in the individual channels music selection. Also, for some reason corporate decided that they needed the host's to talk. So instead of just music it became more FM like with chit chat and patter where none was needed.

I chose XM over Sirius because I liked the programming they offered. After the merger the selection got slimmer and less varied. Bluesville became less bluesy, the comedy channel became less vocal, the bluegrass station became less varied.
With the abundance of online radio and digital music I really don't understand why commercial radio still exists. I really like Pandora and Grooveshark. Not into Spotify yet.

I think satellite radio has run it's course.

[sunburst]

It just occurred to me;
I grew up in the country. When my father was small, they had no electricity and no car. Cars started showing up in the 20s, electricity didn't make it to the area until the 30s. That means I represent the first generation of my family that didn't start out having to go to where musicians were playing "live" in order to hear any music at all (and either walk of ride a horse to do that), and now we complain if we can't hear exactly what we want to as we drive around in our cars. If I was a song writer, I think the makings of a country song are right there...

[Mike Bunting]

I try to avoid things like corporate radio, all the things that tend to homogenize the world. On road trips I like to listen to the local radio stations where possible to get the feel of the areas that I'm passing through, it give a me a sense of the country. I don't want to hear the same stuff that I hear at home. I hope that it's still possible as I plan my upcoming trip to Kentucky.

[Ivan Kelsall]

The 'very best' Bluegrass Radio station that i've heard over the net was "Bluegrass Radio.org".They played just Bluegrass, Newgrass or what we'd maybe call 'new acoustic music'. It was wall to wall good stuff. Unfortunately,it went off the air due to the fact that the hard times hit & it was costing the guy running the station too much of his own cash,which he deemed would be better spent putting his kids through college - who'd blame him for that,but boy,do i ever miss that station,
Ivan

[sunburst]

...I hope that it's still possible as I plan my upcoming trip to Kentucky.

Kentucky, the eastern part at least, has a fair number of locally produced Bluegrass radio shows. You can be the judge of the quality, some are pretty good, others not as good, IMO. Let us know what you encounter between Edmonton and Kentucky, that should be interesting.

[Mike Bunting]

Kentucky, the eastern part at least, has a fair number of locally produced Bluegrass radio shows. You can be the judge of the quality, some are pretty good, others not as good, IMO. Let us know what you encounter between Edmonton and Kentucky, that should be interesting.

I should drive on over from Owensboro to Edmonton, Ky. just on general principal .

[farmerjones]

Last time i listened to Bluegrass Junction, Del McCoury had a show on. He'd talk about the tunes & songs first hand. It was great.
It's a tuff row to hoe: While you can't appeal to everybody, you have to appeal to a wider pop. than the purists. Doesn't matter the station, all my life i been wait through several songs until they get to the good one. Although there are better things, mp3 players are a good way to make your own radio station. Just say, "shuffle."

[Marty Henrickson]

Last time i listened to Bluegrass Junction, Del McCoury had a show on. He'd talk about the tunes & songs first hand. It was great.
It's a tuff row to hoe: While you can't appeal to everybody, you have to appeal to a wider pop. than the purists. Doesn't matter the station, all my life i been wait through several songs until they get to the good one. Although there are better things, mp3 players are a good way to make your own radio station. Just say, "shuffle."

I forgot about "Hand Picked By Del", that was a good show. I'm not sure if that's still on. Most of the time, I just say "random".

[Troy Mayfield]

Sorry to have ruffled any feathers. I bought my first Sirius in 2005 and listened religiously (not just Easter and Christmas) to Sirius Bluegrass. I enjoyed Ned and Chris and their playlists. However, when Sirius and XM merged and Bluegrass Junction became the station, I noticed that much of the music I heard resembled, in my opinion, country western music in the rhythm, timing and vocals and less like traditional bluegrass and simply was not what I wanted to listen to. It was not what I (admittedly I am not an expert) would consider "newgrass".

I love Chris Jones's program and Hand Picked by Del. I will freely admit that I am a relatively young curmudgeon. As someone smarter than me once said, "Well, there's no accounting for taste."

[Troy Mayfield]

Further clarification - I have not listened to Bluegrass Junction regularly for the past 2 years - just occasionally and what I did catch, generally in the weekday mornings, tended to sound like what I described. Tonight, on the way to band practice and again on the way home, I caught a portion of Chris Jones' show and Ned Lubereki's (sp?) and was pleasantly surprised to hear nothing but pretty hardcore bluegrass. Sweeeeet.

[Gan Ainm]

XM had it's pros and cons as well outlined in the previous posts, the cons started to outweigh the pros after the merger, so I decided to take a break and consider re joining later.....here is about half my rant to another (consumer) group on this subject:
"My experience with XM is a masterpiece of taking a loyal customer and alienating him into an arch enemy of all things XM. I intentionally had subscribed to XM using cash, no credit card to avoid any “automatic renewal” and had subscribed for SEVEN years, and enjoyed the service. Then it was time to move on, and had all gone well I might easily have re-upped in a year or two. But No. HECK no. I figured when the 2 year chunk of time I had last paid for lapsed, they would solicit my renewal, when they didn’t get it, cancel my service, end of story. Hah!. They started calling me incessantly and each time I would tell them “no thanks, I am no longer interested”. They would tell me “you have to cancel in writing”, I would say,” no, I didn’t order anything, I am telling you now.” They never stopped. Then I started getting bills adding “late charges”. The implication of course is now I was obligated to pay for something I had not ordered and If I didn’t they would send me to collections and mess with my credit rating. When I finally got mad and started calling “customer service” I entered the labyrinth of Hell. "
I’ll spare y’all the rest but I'm going to predict they will be gone pretty soon, so I would think twice before paying much ahead. Too bad, business model aside it was nice for long trips.

[JeffD]

On the road, I just plug in my iPod and "make due" with my own music collection.

Thats what I have done. My mp3 is nine gigs of exactly what I want to hear. I put it on random and plug it in.

[bgjunkie]

It has been a few months since I last listened, but there is a PODCAST called Bluegrass Highway that plays a lot of traditional bluegrass music. The host (Courtney Pitre) will introduce the songs and then let them play (3 or so in a row). Not a lot of talk usually and some good old stuff.

And if it wasn't for Bluegrass Junction, I don't think I ever would have heard "Good Bunch of Biscuits" by Jim & Jesse.

[Willie Poole]

May all of us could e mail them or call on their request line and tell them we want more of the traditional bluegrass, it might help some....They are`nt the only station that is getting away from their roots....

Willie

[Troy Mayfield]

Well, I have to say that I am retracting my earlier statement about "country" songs disguised as bluegrass. I have kept my radio tuned to Bluegrass Junction for the past week and, well, the programming has been pretty good. It's not all Monroe and F&S, but for the most part, it has been pretty traditional sounding - at least what I have heard.
I know that music evolves, but if we believe in evolution, it ought to evolve to a higher and better form and to my ear, it sounds like it just might be doing that. Again, there's no accounting for taste, but when the music starts sounding like a driving country two-step tune, that's when my taste diverges.

[Jim MacDaniel]

...I think satellite radio has run it's course.

I recently came to the same conclusion. I listen mostly to Pandora at home, plus CD's and MP3's, and I am now running Pandora on my iPhone, and connected it to my car stereo via the aux input. So I just cancelled my XM/Sirius account again, but this time for good: last time is was in protest for XM taking X-Country and U-Pop off the air after the merger - and this time since I upped my data plan and setup Pandora on my iPhone to replace it outright.

When it comes time that we need a second car, I'm leaning towards a Mini or Ford, in part because they both offer Pandora controls built in to their premium sound systems, which interface with Pandora running on your iPhone via A2DP Bluetooth. Now I'm thinking about applying for a position at Pandora over in Oakland, so I can rationalize getting that second car (although I'll probably commute via bike or catch a ride with my wife ).