Bourbon Names
Posted on 01. Feb, 2012 by admin in Featured, News blog
It’s America’s native spirit, made solely in the US, and pretty much exclusively in Kentucky – apparently 97% of all bourbon is distilled near Bardstown.
A little look into the process of making bourbon offers a little insight into Kentucky’s history, from the name bourbon itself, to why and how it evolved. Even the names are intriguing.
Bourbon
It’s named after Old Bourbon county, Kentucky, the first settled area west of the Allegheny mountains of Virginia. Early settlers found that the limestone provided good filtered water, in turn good for growing tasty corn. So abundant was the crop that early settlers took to distilling whiskey from the leftover crop. Soon the whiskey became a sort of currency.
The county was named Bourbon after the French royal dynasty, a thankyou for its help in defeating the British in the war of independence. Louisville and La Fayette county both owe their names this way. When the first whiskey blends made their way down the Ohio, barrels were stamped Old Bourbon. Consumers liked it – few had ever tried corn-based whiskey, with its distinctive sweet, caramelised flavour, gleaned from being aged in charred oak barrels – and soon asked for bourbon by name. It stuck.
Wild turkey
Kentucky was fabled for its wild turkey flocks in pioneer days (it still boasts the largest US wild turkey population), though they were near-extinct when the Ripys distillery brothers started a distillery in 1869. According to Wikipedia, in 1940, distillery executive Thomas McCarthy took some warehouse samples with him for, ah hem, “lubrication”, on a wild turkey hunting trip in 1940. The next year his friends asked him for “some of that wild turkey whiskey”. A brand was born.
Elijah Craig (Heaven Hill Distilleries)
A Baptist preacher who settled in Kentucky along with a 500-strong congregation trampling over the mountains from South Carolina, Craig was reportedly the first to age the whiskey in charred oak casks, which eventually gave bourbon its distinctive rich colour and unique taste. The 12- and 18-year Elijah Craig bourbons are reportedly among the best.
Basil Hayden
One of the lighter bodied bourbons, part of the Beam Inc distillery, and universally thought to be named after the University of Kentucky basketball player. Not so. It honours the Maryland Catholic who settled Kentucky with a 25-strong group in 1785. Hayden was a distinguished distiller, as it seems was virtually everyone who arrived in early Kentucky.
Jim Beam
So named after Johannes Boehm, part of a German emigrant family who arrived in 1780s Kentucky. The clan anglicised their name to Beam; their first batch in 1785 was named Old Jake Beam, after Jacob Beam. Jim Beam was his son. The rest is history.
Buffalo Trace
Named after the “road” or “path” trampled through the wilderness by the millions of migrating buffalo, and which stretches through Kentucky. Buffalo Trace is the oldest distiller in the US, started in 1773, albeit not actually continuously distilling through this time – Prohibition saw to that. Did you know? The Buffalo Trace Distillery is reportedly home to the world’s smallest bonded storage warehouse, Warehouse V – storing only a single barrel of whiskey at a time.
Knob Creek
Don’t laugh! Especially as Abraham Lincoln was born there. Knobs are small rounded isolated hills that pre-dominate in northern parts of Kentucky. According to the Knob Creek website: “Sticking to history as a muse, when it came time to name Knob Creek®, the answer was nearby. Approximately 20 miles south of the family distillery runs a little creek, the same creek that ran by Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home. It’s as simple as that.”
There Is Only One Muhammad Ali
Posted on 12. Jan, 2012 by admin in Featured
There Is Only One Muhammad Ali
There can’t be many a greater champion than Muhammad Ali, the most famous boxer in history, and highly probably the best boxer to grace the ring. Ever!
You wouldn’t think it (where did time go?), but Ali turns 70 on January 17. Yes, 70!
It seems only yesterday he was wowing the world with his boxing prowess, his one in a million character spawning as many memorable quotes and jokes as top-class fights, trading put-downs with his arch-rivals Joe Frazier and George Foreman. At times his politics and bravado shocked, and often angered, America, but the three times undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion is now perhaps the most revered sportsman on the planet (He was voted sportsman of the 20th century by both the BBC and Sports Illustrated).
It all started in Louisville, his home town and now site of the award-winning Muhammad Ali Centre, a shrine to boxing, yes, but now also revered for its clever audio-visual and interactive storytelling about the inspirational man and person who became as fabled as a civil rights activist, a peacemaker and a philanthropist as he did a warrior in the ring (and the press conference).
His story is a humble one; all down to a stolen bike. Ali, then 12, and known as Cassius Clay had his bicycle stolen at the school gym. He approached a policeman, saying he was gonna whoop the culprit. The policeman said he better learn to box first. He did! Within weeks he won his first bout. He soon became known as The Louisville Lip. The world now knows him, simply, as Ali, the greatest.
As Ali would say: “I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.”
Happy birthday Ali.
http://www.ali.com
http://www.alicenter.org
COLONEL INTERVIEW
Posted on 30. Nov, 2011 by admin in Featured
Visit Kentucky and you might meet one of the fabled Kentucky colonels that isn’t colonel Sanders: Colonel Michael Masters, the smartly dressed, softly spoken, uber-polite Southern gentleman making waves with slow-food in a state long associated with its faster nemesis.
A veteran of American TV’s Food Network and the Discovery Channel, the Colonel hosts with his wife, Margaret Sue, the Kentucky Bourbon Cooking School, bourbon tasting and home cooked Southern food for roaming foodies and tourists at his 18th-century home, Chapeze House , in Bardstown, “capital of bourbon country”.
OK, the colonel isn’t actually a colonel – Kentucky colonels are not former military men (they can’t be, there’s of them already – no army, not even the US’s has that big an army for that many colonels) they are honorary titles, afforded by the state governor in recognition of accomplishments and public service. No doubt colonel Masters got his for being so polite, and friendly, a Kentucky ambassador.
Tonight, the colonel is talking me through Kentucky cuisine and the native American spirit – such as Jack Daniels? Wrong! “JD is sour mash, it’s whisky – there’s additives in the process that can’t make it bourbon,” he says, opening a Rock Hill.
“This is a strong bourbon, with romantic aromas on the nose; but on the tongue it will explode,” he says. “It’s phenomenal bourbon.”
Use the nose, look for colour, oggle the legs. “Bourbon has four or five levels of ageing, of charring – each one representing 20 seconds under a flamethrower,” he laughs.
“Just with brandy, look to the light, roll your glass, find the legs – it’s fun to watch the resins and oils. Your nose is about 100 times smarter than your mouth so stick your nose right in. Pick up the notes; whatever it is, candy, sometimes its cut hay, tobacco, caramel, everyone’s nose if different. Find the sweet senses on the front, bitter at the back, sour on the sides. Then, like we do in Kentucky, take a good long drink!!!”
Around 95% of all bourbon is made in Kentucky, a legacy of the first settlers here, the Irish and Scottish mainly, who crossed the Alleghenies when the redcoats left.
The colonel will off you a selection of great bourbons but don’t forget to let him make you a mint julep – sugar, water, mint and bourbon – a Kentucky institution.
“Cocktails should always be strong – who wants a woosy cocktail,” declares the colonel. He shows me the mix. “This is ‘simple syrup’: one half sugar, one half water. Dissolve it, put some mint in, like tea – I like a minty simple syrup. You want the mint to marry the bourbon, so add a sprig of mint. Don’t bruise it, be romantic. Inside every mint julep is 200 years of Kentucky cuisine, it’s a romantic drink.”
We are served benedictine, a cucumber, onion and cream cheese spread that resembles pistachio ice-cream, served with Ritz-style crackers – an odd sight.
So what is Kentucky cuisine? I ask the colonel. “Pork chops on the grill, with bourbon; oh my, it doesn’t get any better. During the season, wild game, beef tenderloin; medium rare is how we do it. We do a lot with old country ham; that’s ham put on salt aged for six months to two years.
“The essence of Southern cooking,” he says, “is grilling, not frying. Especially barbecuing, it’s huge here.”
A tour of Kentucky holds recurrent themes, fried catfish, green beans, country ham, cheese grits (not nice, but when is polenta?) fried green tomatoes, hickory smoked barbecue, with mutton, bizarrely. And baking is strong, too.”
Tonight for dessert we’re having day-old bread soaked in milk and eggs, and bourbon, baked for 45 minutes, topped with a bourbon sauce. “Oh my. Last night, Margaret Sue did a peach cobbler, flaming with bourbon, with ice-cream; went down well.”
“Southern cooking is humble, simple fare, served with a smile,” says the colonel. “We don’t go big on fancy food.”
PROHIBITION
Posted on 02. Nov, 2011 by admin in Featured
Think about Prohibition and what springs to mind? Wild speakeasy’s and illegal drinking dives, bootlegging and moonshine, the rise of organised crime and gangsters such as Al Capone? Or is it Hollywood films like the Sting and The Untouchables? Probably all of them.
Evidence of Prohibition – the banning of the manufacture, transport and sale of alcohol from 1920 to 1933 – is all around in Kentucky, from derelict family distilleries by snaking country lanes or fabled rooms where bootlegging gangsters such as Al Capone wined and dined.
Prohibition, the “noble experiment” to improve the moral fibber and health of the nation, wasn’t easy on Kentucky: of the 17 bourbon distillers pre-Prohibition, only seven survived its repeal in 1933, including the family-run Heaven Hill in Bardstown which were afforded special licences to distill the spirit for “medicinal purposes” – doctors were allowed to prescribe bourbon. You can visit the distillery for tastings and talks on bourbon history.
Prohibition’s effects ravaged Kentucky. Out of the 17 bourbon and whiskey distillers before Prohibition, only seven survived, including Heaven Hill which you can visit near Bardstown. A drive through the county will yield sights of many an abandoned small-scale distillery.
The changes wrought havoc too on Louisville, the transport and merchant hub for bourbon. Its fabled Whiskey Row, now known as Museum row on West Main, was home to myriad warehouses, shippers, and vendors but the trade collapsed almost overnight in 1920 and it has only just recovered its grandeur.
The street, home to the second largest concentration of imposing ornate cast-iron buildings in the US, lost all its importance and wealth overnight in 1920 but it has recovered its lustre now, regenerated courtesy of the 21C Hotel, the Muhammad Ali Museum, and the growth in bars, galleries and restaurants.
People didn’t stop drinking in Prohibition. Designed to cut beer consumption in particular, it made drink actually more popular, especially spirits. Why? Well, why would the usually law-abiding person sip wine and beer slowly, responsibly, and illegally, when you could get a quick hard slug from whiskey and head home fast. Spirits were also easier to smuggle than big barrels of beer.
Prohibition is often associated with glamour, of upmarket speakeasies and clubs but for most Americans after a drink it meant a much more mundane reality than showgirls and high-fliers.
If they wanted a drink, Americans visited a speakeasy, the glamorous illegal bars for those with money or connections. Many of the gangsters flocked to Louisville, with Al Capone himself a frequent visitor, largely to oversee his distribution racket. You can see the secret dining room where he wined and dined at the Seelback Hotel, and his secret door for slipping away from the cops.
For the working man, speakeasies were out of their range, so they frequented “blind tigers” or a “blind pig”, so named because bar owners circumvented the law by selling tickets to punters to see wildlife, often a pig. With the ticket, you got a free drink. And you could buy unlimited tickets.
The Blind Pig, a new restaurant in Butchertown, Louisville, pays homage to this little known fact, an upmarket diner in the city’s old meat-packing district.
For many, however, it was just as easy to get a drink as visiting a doctor who prescribed “spiritus ferment” for medicinal purposes, aka whiskey or bourbon. The less scrupulous GP would prescribe bourbon for a small “fee” – after all, alcohol wasn’t illegal to possess.
You can buy alcohol across Kentucky nowadays but be warned, some states are dry, with alcohol banned.
Louisville seafood hub
Posted on 03. Oct, 2011 by admin in Featured
Wherever you go in Louisville, the variety of food is astounding. The town is enjoying a renaissance in cooking with many restaurants such as Proof on Main at the 21C hotel leading the charge in cooking the freshest, locally grown, sustainable ingredients. Many are experimenting with bourbon, cooking delicious dishes such as bourbon fried scallops at Bourbons Bistro on Frankfort Avenue.
Freshest, local ingredients? Scallops? Peruse the menus of Louisville’s upmarket eateries and sea fish and seafood, oddly, is everywhere; as common as the pork, beef and even bison meat raised on farms nearby.
Nowhere is it more obvious than at Highlands Fish Market in Louisville’s Highlands district, which sells all manner of seafood and fish, from Carolina garoupa to Canadian lobster tails, Atlantic or Alaskan salmon to Boston scrod and Chesapeake Oysters.
Excuse me, but how can a city nearly 1,000 miles away from the saltwater sea, in the midwest, offer relatively cheap and super fresh seafood and fish?
The answer is a little bit weird. Fabled for bourbon and horseracing, Louisville has bizarrely become just as famous for being a seafood mecca. How? The answer lies above. In the sky.
Crook your head up, to the blue skies above, and you will see a plane either land or take-off virtually every other minute. No ordinary planes, these. They’re freight planes, usually UPS: the postal giant has its main US and Worldport air freight hub here, employing thousands of people.
This means seafood from either the Atlantic or Pacific coasts can be sent to Louisville, stored live and fresh in huge holding tanks and flown out to order, to or from almost anywhere in the world, and everywhere in the states, within hours.
No food is as seemingly ubiquitous on Louisville menus than lobster, a foodstuff famed for being tasty only eaten just after it is cooked live. That’s not a problem in Louisville, with the city sporting some of the wold’s largest lobster tanks.
Food giants such as Clearwater Seafoods, the seafood and fish company based in Bedford, Nova Scotia, have holding tanks here, in Clearwater’s case two huge 25,000-gallon saltwater holding tanks here for lobster near the freight port.
The company trucks in 30,000 pounds of live lobsters each week, by lorry, a journey that can last more than 30 hours, according to the Economist magazine. “There they recover in tanks filled with saltwater … The water is kept clean by being passed through giant versions of the sort of filters and skimmers that keep saltwater aquariums in good shape. When an order comes in, the lobsters are packed in special containers for UPS to deliver.”
Louisville residents don’t have to wait for a plane to land their shrimp, crabs, scallops or lobster – it’s already here, in holding tanks, meaning fresh lobster, even from Nova Scotia, is available quicker, fresher and often cheaper than most other places.
Bon appetite.
KENTUCKY ROUND UP
Posted on 01. Sep, 2011 by admin in Featured
The Perryville Battlefield historic state park
There’s no better time to visit Kentucky than September, it’s bursting with events and activities, honouring the past, present and the future; be it this year’s special homage to bluegrass king Bill Monroe or the anniversary of the civil war battle at Perryville, celebrating the unique Kentucky bourbon experience on the state’s fabled bourbon trail, it’s fabled fried chicken, or looking towards Kentucky’s promising future as a motor racing venue.
First off, there’s the 100th anniversary of bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s birth. Events have been taking place all year, celebrating the life, times and music of the king of Bluegrass, but no better an event is the whooping week-long good time to be had from September 27 at the Jerusalem Ridge annual festival, hosted at the home of Monroe and his family near Rosine, Kentucky, the family farm since 1801. It’s worth a trip just for the band names: the Cumberland Highlanders or Phillip Steinmetz and his Sunny Tennesseans.
It’s enough to make you thirsty, so head for the Kentucky bourbon Trail and find out more about Kentucky’s unique spirit with a special mapped out bourbon trail taking in six signature distilleries nestled along winding country roads and soft rolling green hills, through the inviting historic towns and most beautiful scenery the Bluegrass has to offer. The bourbon doesn’t taste bad either. Pop in to each distillery and get your special bourbon passports stamped.
For military buffs there’s the annual historical re-enactment of the Battle of Perryville, where enthusiasts don the grey and the blue uniforms to relive the famous battle fought across the lush green rolling Chaplin Hills, Kentucky’s biggest and bloodiest battle of the American civil war, the tumultuous conflict now marking its 150th anniversary right across the US.
It’s a scenic, almost idyllic drive and walk across the preserved 7,000-acre battlefield that belies any notion of the bloodbath in October 1862. Head there on October 1 and 2 for some serious re-enactments. Don’t forget the small museum – it has great multimedia displays which shed a lot of light on a war we in the UK are largely in the dark about.
It’s taken a long, long time but Kentucky is now on the serious road to becoming a motor racing mecca, the 200-acre big Kentucky Speedway track complex near Sparta – between Louisville and Cincinnatti – now hosting IndyCar and Nascar races.
Fancy taking a seat with 116,000 other petrolheads, with cars racing at over 200mph for as many as 500 laps, all the while tucking into hot dogs and nachos? Then pop down to Sparta. Go on, you deserve it – on October 1 and 2, Kentucky Speedway hosts the fabled IndyCar competitions, the American version of Formula 1. Click here for tickets.
Fun of a lighter kind, although with just as much oil, can be had at the annual World Chicken Festival, smack bang in the beautiful Kentucky mountains, in London, no less, in Laurel County, where Colonel Sanders started his fabled KFC empire in the 40s. Head here for madcap fun with a chicken theme, including the world’s largest skillet (frying pan), the Chick-a-Lympics, the hot wings eating contest, a clucking competition, the run for the roost and the bizarre redneck games. It’s one of Kentucky’s largest festivals, and it’s serious fun. This year’s it’s from September 22-25.
BIG BOYS BIRTHDAY
Posted on 03. Aug, 2011 by admin in Featured
Done New York, been San Fran? done Vegas, and didn’t like Miami? We know the feeling. Then chaps, why not head to Kentucky for that Big boys Birthday with a difference?
For you and your mates, Kentucky’s got it all: the home of the fabled Kentucky Derby and the birthplace of bourbon. It’s got weird ol’ indie Louisville and the classy track at Keeneland races. It’s got superb rivers for adventure (be it kayaking or poker).
Can’t imagine it? Then check out this fast ‘n loose itinerary, a model plan for every Big Boys Bash.
First off Louisville. Grab a ticket for the Kentucky Derby, either watching in the celeb-studded grandstand or having a mint julep-fuelled riot in the Glastonbury-style free-for-all in the outfield (it has to be seen to be believed). Make sure you fill up at the venerable old-school diner and pharmacy – think breakfast waffles with maple syrup and bacon or sausage and pancakes; it’s where the jockeys eat.
Stay at the 21C, the uber-du jour art museum hotel in downtown Main Street, just by the Slugger Museum home of the fabled baseball bat. Taking a pee is as funky as you’ll ever get. Across the road is boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s award-winning museum – you can grab an actual ringside seat here and watch up to 13 of his best ever fights on video. If you get a chance, rush across the awesome Ohio River and check out the memorial to Louis and Clark, they set of there for their epic adventure.
Louisville is home to some of the best, most inventive American cuisine, getting a name for tasty locally sourced food. Try Proof on Main, at the 21C, for the local Berkshire Pig chops in bourbon sauce, or eat in a former speakeasy, now the Blind Pig in trendy Butchertown. Bizarrely, it’s a seafood mecca too, despite being 10 hours’ drive from the sea (it’s the main UPS air freight hub, a lot of fresh US seafood tanks ere for re-delivery).
If you like bourbon, take to the Urban Bourbon Trail, a set route taking in various high-class bars across Louisville offering bourbon tastings – think various connoisseur bourbons, served on a plank, all explained by the restaurant’s bourbon expert. Scotch whiskey will never taste the same again. On the tour take in the Old Seelbach, where the Great Gatsby was set (and part written), and where Al Capone partied (you can see his special dining room and secret exit, for when the cops came calling)
Outside Louisville you have the flowing, undulating hills of Kentucky, prime real estate for the main industries: horses and bourbon. Check out the distilleries, open to the public, such as the scenic Heaven Hill. As you drive around, play roadkill bingo – you’ll never see so many sad furry critters mown down by the road (watch out, never drive over a skunk with the windows down. Yeeesh!).
Centred on Lexington, in the heart of the bluegrass country, you pass all the stud farms and mansions, home to the fabled Kentucky colonels, gilded by white picket fences. At Lexington there’s Keeneland, the venerable, classy racetrack, home to perhaps the world’s best horse sales and racing. If sport is your thang, take in a game at the University of Kentucky – the Kentucky Wildcats are college basketball’s most successful team. Near Lexington you can visit the Perryville battlefield, one of the bloodiest battles of the American civil war, now marking its 150th anniversary. There’s a small but good multimedia museum here spelling out who lost and why.
For more active pursuits, head into the hills, home to the bluegrass music pioneered by Bill Monroe, now marking his 100th birthday. There’s bluegrass festivals aplenty all year. In the east, you can kayak in the amazing Red River Gorge park or on the Cumberland River, where you can visit the awesome Cumberland falls – “the Niagara of the south” .
For lunch, pop over to London (Kentucky, London Kentucky!!!) for the KFC. Excuse me, I hear you say? Well, it is the first ever KFC, set up by Colonel Sanders himself. It looks a little different to most modern-day KFCs, thankfully. There’s small museum here to tell you how the colonel and his special recipe of 11 different herbs and spices all got started; well worth a detour. As is Hazzard county – yep, inspirational home of Boss Hogg and the Duke boys.
Still missing Vegas? Just head back to Louisville and become Brett Maverick, sipping bourbon and playing Texas Hold ‘Em on a night cruise of the Ohio river, all aboard the old-world Mississippi-style paddle steamer the Belle of Louisville. That’s Vegas, old school style.
The Other Royal Wedding
Posted on 08. Jul, 2011 by admin in Featured
Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Britain has had enough of royal weddings of late, but not so. Zara Phillips, the horse-mad eldest granddaughter of the Queen, and England rugby star Mike Tindall are due to tie the knot this month.
With Zara and Mike due to tie the knot this July in Edinburgh, the second Royal wedding of the year, Kentucky could be the perfect place for horse lover Zara to spend her honeymoon.
Zara is a top equestrian athlete, a former Eventing Word Champion and schooled, no less with a university qualification in equine physiotherapy. She also designs equestrian sportswear.
And for so equestrian-minded a bride, where better a honeymoon than Kentucky.
The state is horse mad, too, host to the fabled Kentucky Derby in April, host to the finest racehorse breeding studs in the US (all down to the sweeping, lush bluegrass, apparently), the hallowed Rolex Kentucky event and perhaps the biggest-ever World Equestrian Games last autumn in Lexington – the sprawling Horse Park hopes to stage an annual equestrian games each year, so successful was the event – good news, given it was the first time the event has ever left Europe. At Keeneland, also in Lexington, it plays host to fine race meets and unsurpassed horse auctions and sales. A visit to an auction is a must, especially at venerable Keeneland, now celebrating its 75th year.
Kentucky is the US epicentre of the horse business, home to hundreds of studs, vet practices and all things equine, from saddlers to shoemakers. With that CV, Zara could put out some feelers for a job, post-honeymoon, of course.
And for Mike? Being a rugby boy he’d love the bourbon distilleries – Kentucky is home to 95% of the American spirit, it’s lush bluegrass and mineral-rich rivers as good for the drink as it is for horses to graze. Most can be visited as part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, including the independently owned Heaven Hill (at Bardstown) and Woodford Reserve (at Versailles), all a scenic short drive from Lexington.
As a sportsman, Mike want to try his hand at golf; he’s sure to be invited to the exclusive, Jack Nicklaus-designed, world class Valhalla course near Louisville, which once hosted the Ryder Cup (the US won, calm down Mike) and many a PGA event. And if Mike wants to take part in sport with a more American flavour, why not basketball, possibly Kentucky’s No1 sport, and home of the celebrated Kentucky Wildcats, the most successful basketball team in the college game, based at Lexington’s University of Kentucky, neatly, and somewhat ironically abbreviated to UK.
And where would they stay? Why not the honeymoon suite at the boutique 21c Museum Hotel – Conde Nast Traveller Reader Choice Awards in 2009 and 2010 – on Louisville’s increasingly vibrant Museum Row (Mike, being a bit of a slugger himself, could take a swing in the Louisville Slugger museum, home of the fabled baseball bat, or pop down the road to Muhammad Ali’s award-winning museum). Zara? Well, she could take in the 21C’s hip art attractions and gallery. If the royal couple prefer a bit of history, they could hole up at the more regal Old Seelbach Hilton, once home to F Scott Fitzgerald, who part wrote the Great Gatsby there.
If there are problems with the privacy, they could learn a trick from one-time visitor Al Capone – a secret stairway out of the restaurant. Though Zara and Mark will want to avoid the paparazzi, not the police.
June 2011: Bluegrass
Posted on 01. Jun, 2011 by admin in Featured
Bill Monroe
Bluegrass, the unique Kentucky-born music, takes on more meaning than ever this year, marking what would have been the 100th birthday of good ‘ol Bill Monroe.
If James Brown is the godfather of soul, Monroe is the godfather, founding father, and leading light of Bluegrass, with an endless catalogue of genre-forging classics, from the fast fiddles of Orange Blossom Special to the rock ‘n roll of Rocky Road Road Blues and the blues-tinged ballad of the Blue Moon of Kentucky.
There’s bluegrass events galore in Kentucky, with Monroe’s birthday lending a special significance to the annual gatherings, not least the 38th annual bluegrass bash at the Kentucky Horse Park in historic Lexington from June 9-12.
It’s America’s oldest bluegrass festival, set in the fabled Horse Park’s rolling bluegrass grounds. Started in 1973, the festival celebrates the deliciously addictive music to a packed house of footstomping fans each and every year
So what is bluegrass? Well, it’s a kissing cousin of country music but with roots easily identified in old-style English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish folk, but there’s even tinges of the west African music that inspired the blues.
Sound kinda odd? Well then let the founding father Monroe explain it better:
“Bluegrass is Scotch bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin’. It’s Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It’s blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound. It’s plain music that tells a good story. It’s played from my heart to your heart, and it will touch you. Bluegrass is music that matters.”
Got that? No? Well, just refer to the Coen Brothers’ movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, an apparent homage to old time bluegrass music, starring Kentucky local boy, George Clooney. Soggy Bottom Boys featuring George Clooney
People still think Kentucky homeboy Clooney sang the song, he didn’t. But Dan Tyminski did, catch him here .
There should be a whooping good time at the Jerusalem Ridge annual festival, hosted at the home of Monroe and his family at Jerusalem Ridge near Rosine, Kentucky, the farm home of the Monroes since 1801.
Says the website: “Bill called the Ridge ‘the most beautiful place in the world’. The youngest of eight children Bill was left home while his big brothers went to town. He used to go up on the ridge with his dad and Uncle and listen to the fox hounds run at night. Here he would hear stories about the old ways and listen to the ancient sounds of Uncle Pen’s fiddle.”
As yet, no date has been set for the 2011, but look out for the bash in September/October.
If you want immediate satisfaction, check out bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs on iTunes, Grammy awardwinning Alison Krauss, or even comic actor Steve Martin, a big convert to the banjo and bluegrass, mastering the instrument on his first solo album, called The Crow, with guest vocals by a little-known star named Dolly Parton.
Steve Martin loves the banjo. To him it’s “a high lonesome sound … generated nostalgia for experiences I never had, joy I was yet to experience, and melancholy that was yet to come”.
Thousands of devotees agree, all flocking to another annual bash, the bluegrass celebration known as the River of Music Party (aka ROMP) in Owensboro every June, at the bluegrass musical genre’s dedicated centre, the International Bluegrass Music Museum. Or if you have a phone, dial 1-888-mybanjo, of course.
Celebrate the World’s biggest Beatles inspired music Festival
Posted on 11. May, 2011 by admin in Featured
It’s Louisville, not Liverpool, hosting the 10th annual World’s Largest Beatles-Inspired Music Festival.
Held from May 26th to 30th 2011, Abbey Road on the River comes to the Kentucky city of Louisville, also famous for the Kentucky Derby and Muhammad Ali.
Join 50,000 other Beatles enthusiasts at this five day festival of everything ‘Fab Four’, including 50 of the best international tribute bands. Other acts include Hal Bruce and the Hard Dazed Knights performing all 214 Beatles songs and in the order they were originally released – a feat no other artist has accomplished. Food and drink are available throughout, and festival goers can even participate in the biggest Beatles song singing contest ever, free guitar lessons and a ‘Summer of Love Day’.
A Five-Day Best ticket costs from £121 per person and includes all outdoor shows, a Single-Day Best ticket costs from £39 per person. Book now at www.abbeyroadontheriver.com, for a Louisville equivalent of the ‘Summer of Love’.