Any way you look at it, 2001 has been a tough year for music. Concert ticket sales are down, record sales are in a slump.

        But just as a bear market doesn't mean every stock is down, the news isn't all bad. As pop stars like the Backstreet Boys and Mariah Carey bemoan slumping sales, one musical style is having it's biggest year ever.

        “This is probably one of the most exciting years that bluegrass has had since (bluegrass founder Bill) Monroe had (banjo player Earl) Scruggs join his band back in '45,” says Dan Hays, executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association.

Ricky Skaggs

        “There's just an enormous amount of recognition and dedication to the music by people simply finding it for the first time or returning to it. There has been more bluegrass on the charts than there probably has been collectively in the last 30 years.”

"Biggest year ever'

       

        “It's probably been the biggest year ever for the music ... based on the sales numbers and the attention that the music on the whole has gotten in the media,” says Northern Kentucky-based bluegrass bassist/journalist Jon Weisberger, the IBMA's 2000 Print Media Person of the Year.

        Consider the facts:

        • The bluegrass-driven soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? is the year's longest-running No. 1 country album, topping the charts for 20 weeks and selling 2 million copies.

        • The self-titled debut by Nickel Creek, a band of teen-age bluegrass virtuosi, is in the Top 10 on the Billboard Independent Album Chart.

        • 10 of the 75 albums on Billboard's Sept.15 country charts are bluegrass, including Hayseed Dixie's bluegrass tribute to heavy-metal heroes AC/DC.

        • Alison Krauss' new album, New Favorite, sold 40,000 copies in the first week of its release, landing at No. 35 on Billboard's pop album chart, unprecedented for an acoustic, bluegrass-based CD.

Krauss

        • Bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley, featured in the O Brother soundtrack, was profiled in The New Yorker in August.

        • Mainstream country stars Dolly Parton and Patty Loveless released bluegrass albums this year. For Ms. Parton, it was her second critically acclaimed bluegrass project.

        • Colorado, home of the famed Telluride Bluegrass Festival, boasts a vital regional scene that includes such bands as Leftover Salmon, the Tony Furtado Band, String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band and Runaway Truck Ramp.

        While Colorado bluegrass is a fairly recent hybrid, bluegrass has had strong roots in the Tristate virtually since its beginning. When Mr. Scruggs left Mr. Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1948, he formed the Foggy Mountain Boys with Lester Flatt. The group's signature tune, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” was recorded in Cincinnati, then a country music recording capital rivaling Nashville.

        Cincinnati-based King Records recorded some of the most influential bluegrass of all time, including dozens of seminal tracks by the Stanley Brothers and Reno & Smiley, as well as such greats as Charlie Moore.

        From the '50s into the '70s, the Cincinnati-Middletown-Hamilton-Dayton corridor was the bluegrass equivalent of the blues' Highway 61. Dozens of major bluegrass artists emerged from the area, including the Osborne Brothers, Red Allen, Jimmy Martin, J.D. Crowe, Larry Sparks and the duo of Jim McCall and Earl Taylor.

        The scene continues to thrive, as such local spots as Kaldi's, the Comet, Arnold's, Southgate House and the 20th Century regularly feature live bluegrass, both home grown and imported.
       

The local scene
       

        To archive the past and chronicle the present, a group of the area's bluegrass enthusiasts is organizing the bgrass.inc.org Web site. One of the organizers, bluegrass performer and writer Katie Laur, is very high on the current scene.

Ralph Stanley

        “I think in Cincinnati right now we have one of the strongest bluegrass communities we ever had,” she says, citing such local talents as singer Ma Crow, mandolinist Scot Risner, multi-instrumentalist Ed Cunningham, banjo player Jeff Roberts and bassist/journalist Jon Weisberger.

        Many of them will be down in Louisville on Thursday, when the international bluegrass community gathers for the International Bluegrass Music Association's annual awards and trade show.

        Since the 1997 move from IBMA's base in Owensboro, Ky., to larger facilities in Louisville, attendance has boomed, drawing thousands of musicians, booking agents, instrument manufacturers, record company executives and other music industry types to the Galt House.

        “The trade show has grown on average over the last four years at a rate of 10-15 percent per year,” the IBMA's Mr. Hays says. “We're seeing more people from the larger world of entertainment coming to the show.”

        Expect to see more than ever this year, and the reason is O Brother Where Art Thou? The Coen Brothers' film starring George Clooney launched a mini-industry with its soundtrack album and live sequel and concert film, Down From the Mountain.

        Both CDs feature bluegrass and bluegrass-related musicians such as Ralph Stanley, Alison Krauss, Norman Blake and John Hartford, but the music hearkens more to pre-bluegrass mountain music. Nonetheless, the contemporary artists are reaping the rewards.

        “It's been fun watchin' all this happen for Dan,” singer/fiddler Alison Krauss says of her band member Dan Tyminski, the singing voice of Mr. Clooney in O Brother. Ms. Krauss also sings on the disc, harmonizing with Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris. Tuesday, Ms. Krauss, Mr. Tyminski, dobro player Jerry Douglas and the Union Station band play the Taft Theatre.

        “It's really been an amazing thing to see happen for this kind of music,” she says of the soundtrack's success.
       

A long time coming
       

        While O Brother may be unprecedented, many on the bluegrass world say it's been a long time coming. Ms. Krauss' 1995 album, Now That I've Found You, also sold 2 million copies, but it took a lot longer to do it.

        “This is like the boom, but there was a fuse that lit it,” Mr. Weisberger says, citing the success of Ms. Krauss, the return of Ricky Skaggs to bluegrass and the crossover success of a CD collaboration by Americana singer/songwriter Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band.

        There's also a growing younger audience for the music, a result of the Colorado bluegrass movement, which draws young Dead Heads to the music. Ms. Krauss also draws a young audience, as does teen band Nickel Creek, whose youth appeal is so strong they've been jokingly called the “Backstreet Mountain Boys” (even though the band's fiddler is the un-boyish Sara Watkins)

CONCERTS

Tuesday: Alison Krauss & Union Station, 8 p.m., Taft Theatre (562-4949; $26-$33).     Saturday: Larry Sparks & The Lonesome Ramblers, 7:30 p.m., Ripley High School, Ripley, Oh. (684-4342).     Oct. 23: Del McCoury Band, 8 p.m., 20th Century, Oakley Square (779-9462; $15 advance, $18 day of show).     Nov. 10: Iris DeMent, 8 p.m., Parrish Auditorium, Miami University Hamilton Campus (513-529-3200).     Nov. 11: Nickel Creek, 7:30 p.m., Parrish Auditorium, Miami University Hamilton Campus (sold out).     Nov. 17: Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys, 8 p.m., Southgate House, Newport (779-9462; $15 advance, $18 day of show).     Nov. 30: Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, 8 p.m., Southgate House, Newport (779-9462; $15 advance, $18 day of show).     Feb. 7: Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer, 8 p.m., Parrish Auditorium, Miami University Hamilton Campus (513-529-3200).     March 2: Del McCoury Band, 8 p.m., Parrish Auditorium, Miami University Hamilton Campus (513-529-3200).     April 14: Earl Scruggs Family and Friends with Sonny Osborne, J.D. Crowe, Jim Mills, Joe Mullins, Rob McCoury, Tom Adams and guest vocalist Rhonda Vincent, 7:30 p.m., Nutter Center, Dayton, Oh. (562-4949).     You can also hear bluegrass Sunday nights at the Comet in Northside, and regularly at Kaldi's, BarrelHouse Brewing Co. and Arnold's downtown.

        The greening of bluegrass is being noted even by older musicians.

        At 34, singer/mandolinist Ronnie McCoury is a 20-year veteran with the Del McCoury Band. He's seeing lots of new faces at shows.

        “In the '80s, when I started playing music with my dad, you didn't see kids out like you do now,” he says. “It's coming into the cycle for my age group. I think people are tired of what they're getting crammed down their throats on the radio, and they're looking for something else.”

        The McCoury band also got a boost when the jam band Phish started doing one of its songs, “Beauty of My Dreams” in concert. After jamming with them at a Nashville show, Phish invited the McCoury band to play at a 1999 concert in upstate New York that drew 77,000.

        Local promoter John Madden has seen that bluegrass crowd come out for the McCoury Band, as well as Mr. Stanley and Colorado bluegrass/jam band Yonder Mountain. He has become Cincinnati's leading promoter of national bluegrass shows.

        With diverse audiences that range from young hippies and black-garbed artiste types to older folkies and country music fans, it's hard to figure out who the “bluegrass crowd” is, he says. “But just about every bluegrass show I've done has done pretty well.”

        After a lengthy, multiplatinum career in mainstream country music, Ricky Skaggs returned to bluegrass in 1997 with an acoustic band, Kentucky Thunder, and the album Bluegrass Rules. For him, it felt like the right thing to do, and he's happy to see so many who agree.

        “I've been feeling it for years, but now I'm seeing it, I'm really seeing it happen,” he says. He charts it to the death of bluegrass founder Bill Monroe in 1996, saying it's similar to the death of a painter and the resulting rise in the value of his work.

        “It's almost like after Mr. Monroe's death there was so much emphasis being put on the music. People started listening again, started hearing it.

        “Of course the O Brother thing just helped so much in the promoting this old-time music. It wasn't really a bluegrass soundtrack, we know that, but it brought the ears to the table where we can put stuff out that may cause those people that bought that soundtrack to turn around and want to know more of the history of this music and know more about it.”

        And that's the next step. Now that the audience has been expanded, the bluegrass world is trying to figure out how to keep its attention.

        Mr. Skaggs compares it to farming, with the success of O Brother preparing the soil.

        “I think the ground is plowed and just very open for us and others to walk through it and plant those good seeds,” he says. “I'm seeing country music just so down and depressed from the marketplace that it was five years ago, three years ago, even. And it's like bluegrass has been this constant that has continued to rise since '96, '97.”

        Others see it more akin to stocks. Like canny market analysts, bluegrass watchers don't expect the current boom to continue at this pace.

        “If you think it's a permanent change, you're going to be disappointed,” Mr. Weisberger says.

        “But if you think of it as a renewing of the audience and the musicians with a younger generation of people getting interested and some of them sticking around, I think that's a realistic view, and I think that's how a roots-music genre can survive.”

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