Bluegrass Music

Savage Bluegrass Band plays Tuesday at Sam's Bar and Restaurant, 9994 Washington Blvd. N. No cover. 301-317-7796.

The Manor Tavern in Monkton is teaming up with the Oyster Recovery Partnership for a Sunday afternoon Oyster Festival. The event will feature more than 20 types of different oysters, shucked by Maryland and World Champion Oyster Shucker George Hastings. The Oyster Festival will include displays of local arts and crafts, children's activities -- including a pirate ship moon, bounce -- and live bluegrass music by Slim Pickinz. Smyth Jewelers has donated a pearl necklace and earrings, raffle tickets are $15 with all the proceeds benefiting the Oyster Recovery Partnership . Admission to the Oyster Festival at Manor Tavern is free.

The Manor Tavern in Monkton is teaming up with the Oyster Recovery Partnership for a Sunday afternoon Oyster Festival. The event will feature more than 20 types of different oysters, shucked by Maryland and World Champion Oyster Shucker George Hastings. The Oyster Festival will include displays of local arts and crafts, children's activities -- including a pirate ship moon, bounce -- and live bluegrass music by Slim Pickinz. Smyth Jewelers has donated a pearl necklace and earrings, raffle tickets are $15 with all the proceeds benefiting the Oyster Recovery Partnership . Admission to the Oyster Festival at Manor Tavern is free.

The Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival What: A four-day, family-friendly festival that pays homage to bluegrass music with more than a dozen daily performances and jam sessions on two stages. Drawing some of the biggest names in bluegrass, the internationally acclaimed Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival is a tradition for many loyal fans of the genre. The festival includes performances by Tony Rice, Mountain Heart and Rhonda Vincent and the Rage. The event also includes arts and crafts, vendors and a variety of food.

Get out the picks and limber up the fingers.The seventh annual Kingsdale Bluegrass Music Festival comes to the Kingsdale (Pa.) Fire Company Grounds Thursday through July 18.Fourteen bluegrass groups will take the stage to offer a variety of down-home sounds with banjos, mandolins, guitars and bass."

Weaving in and out of the tight knot that they formed in front of the two microphones on stage, the five members of the Del McCoury Band also wove a spell over the audience with their bluegrass sounds during a performance last week at the Rouse Theatre as part of the Columbia Festival of the Arts. Earlier in the day, the group held a free workshop in the mini-theater at Wilde Lake High School. Considered to be a premier bluegrass group, the Del McCoury Band is headed by patriarch Del McCoury, who plays guitar and is the lead vocalist.

While Ross Nickerson might not teach young wizards as in the popular Harry Potter movie, he does impart a sort of magic to the students who gather in his Catonsville basement apartment. Nickerson is the proprietor of The Banjo School, where he teaches the five-string version of the instrument to budding musicians. The 44-year-old Massachusetts native has played all over the country, winning awards at regional competitions for his lightning-quick picking. Now he spends his days teaching students from as far away as Texas and Kentucky.

When Debbie Williamson was a kid, growing up in Ceredo, W.Va., just across the Big Sandy River from Ashland, Ky., she never dreamed that she'd be a bluegrass singer one day."I've sung all my life, back home in church, and in choruses all the way through college," she says. "But I was never on stage until about three years ago."But the Nashville-based singer who grew up in the a cappella Church of Christ tradition is learning fast.This summer, Williamson's first solo album -- "Weepin' Willow Blues" -- is being released by Mid-Knight Records, a small label based in Greensboro, N.C.The first single, "Love Among The Dandelion," written by her husband, Kevin, is being distributed by Prime Cuts of Bluegrass, a music sampler service based in Keokuk, Iowa, to 380 disc jockeys whose programs are heard on 1,050 radio stations in the United States and Canada.

;(lines=ql);(dclead=((bodlead)*(clines)) +(2*(bodlead)));(adjcl=dclead);(clines=( A-1));(bodadj=(bodpt)*25);(bodadj=bodadj /32);(psize=((bodlead)*(clines))+(bodadj ));(psize=psize*32);(dcptsize=psize/22); (adj=dcptsize/33);cf21,(dcptsize),(dclead);ec8,Q,capQ;ec7,1,cap2Leon R. Kagarise, a retired audio technician whose collection of photos and tapes of country and bluegrass musicians he began recording in the late 1950s caught the attention of the Library of Congress Folklife Center and the Country Music Foundation, died of congestive heart failure Saturday at his daughter's Perry Hall home.

Bluegrass music has finally found a place in Baltimore where musicians, young or old, experienced or beginners, can come together and partake in a Sunday afternoon jam session once a month. The Second Sunday Social, a bluegrass pickin' party at the 8x10, started four months ago as a way to showcase the musical genre and give local musicians a place to learn more about it. "The 8x10 really wanted to have bluegrass on the calendar, but bluegrass music is not very economical for the club," said Bryan Shupe, owner of the 8x10 since 2005.

I t's cozy in a small room in the rear of the coffee bar. The first flakes of a gathering snowstorm are swirling outside, and on a dimly lit stage, guitar player Jordan Tice bends over his instrument, eyes narrowed, feeling his way through a few simple, mournful chords. They're the opening sounds of "Ode to a Vending Machine," one of the dozens of original tunes that have given Tice, a 22-year-old Arnold native, the reputation of "an amazingly gifted guitarist and composer," in the words of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine, one of the holier scriptures in the world of acoustic music.

Savage Bluegrass Band plays Tuesday at Sam's Bar and Restaurant, 9994 Washington Blvd. N. No cover. 301-317-7796.

;(lines=ql);(dclead=((bodlead)*(clines)) +(2*(bodlead)));(adjcl=dclead);(clines=( A-1));(bodadj=(bodpt)*25);(bodadj=bodadj /32);(psize=((bodlead)*(clines))+(bodadj ));(psize=psize*32);(dcptsize=psize/22); (adj=dcptsize/33);cf21,(dcptsize),(dclead);ec8,Q,capQ;ec7,1,cap2Leon R. Kagarise, a retired audio technician whose collection of photos and tapes of country and bluegrass musicians he began recording in the late 1950s caught the attention of the Library of Congress Folklife Center and the Country Music Foundation, died of congestive heart failure Saturday at his daughter's Perry Hall home.

ROBERT `RED' SHIPLEY, 70 WAMU-FM radio host Robert "Red" Shipley, a longtime Washington radio host who specialized in country, Southern gospel and bluegrass music, died Saturday of cancer at the University of Virginia Medical Center, said Kay Summers, director of public information at WAMU-FM. The Tennessee native was a fixture of the Washington region's airwaves for four decades, and until last month hosted WAMU-FM's Stained-Glass Bluegrass program on Sundays for 25 years. The International Bluegrass Music Association named him the 2006 Broadcaster of the Year, based on voting by his peers.

Bluegrass music has finally found a place in Baltimore where musicians, young or old, experienced or beginners, can come together and partake in a Sunday afternoon jam session once a month. The Second Sunday Social, a bluegrass pickin' party at the 8x10, started four months ago as a way to showcase the musical genre and give local musicians a place to learn more about it. "The 8x10 really wanted to have bluegrass on the calendar, but bluegrass music is not very economical for the club," said Bryan Shupe, owner of the 8x10 since 2005.