Singer/guitarist extraordinaire Michael Daves and I just filmed a video in Brooklyn, New York to help promote the Fresh Grass Festival appearance we'll be doing in Massachusetts on September 19th. I should be able to load it up here soon.

Tony

Bryan Sutton is in the ArtistWorks studio this week recording new lessons for students of the Online Bluegrass Guitar School. We announced this in the Forum a while back and Bryan's students immediately jumped at the opportunity to suggest topics for the new lessons. Bryan has been taking everything into consideration and had a very productive first day recording on Monday recording many new guitar lessons which all look and sound fantastic. Click here for a little clip of him playing "Whiskey Before Breakfast" in the studio. 

There's so much to come, and we are as excited as you are to get it to you. Stay tuned!

Bryan Sutton is in the ArtistWorks studio this week recording new lessons for students of the Online Bluegrass Guitar School. We announced this in the Forum a while back and Bryan's students immediately jumped at the opportunity to suggest topics for the new lessons. Bryan has been taking everything into consideration and had a very productive first day recording on Monday recording many new guitar lessons which all look and sound fantastic. Click here for a little clip of him playing "Whiskey Before Breakfast" in the studio. 

There's so much to come, and we are as excited as you are to get it to you. Stay tuned!

Hey Everybody,

Here I sit in what will be a significant part and representation of my "home" this fall, a hotel room. This is a nice hotel room, though. It's also connected to a fun show. Hot Rize will play A Prairie Home Companion this weekend. This is a live radio show I listened to just about as long as I've listened to the Grand Ole Opry!  We're headed to rehearse in abut 45 minutes.  

Hot Rize will tour a good bit this fall. I'll do more and more VEs from hotel rooms like the one I'm in as the tour progresses. I'm really glad I can do these with my iPad. I'll try to update everybody from time to time with various blog posts or videos. I hope to see some of you out on the trail as well. We most always make our way out front after shows to meet and greet.

I feel very fortunate to be part of this band so I'm basically looking forward to the tour. I don't tour like this all that often, but it seems like every few years, some neat opportunity comes up and this is one of them. I'm one of the lucky professional musicians who don't have to spend all their time on the road.  HINT - It's really not glamorous... it's a lot of 4 am wake up calls after hitting the pillow at 2 am.  You can check out our tour dates at hotrize.com or bryansutton.com.  A funny thing that really happens is I forget my room number sometimes.  After you stay in hotel rooms a certain number of times in a row, they all look the same, and I really can't remember if it's 145, or 311, or maybe 222... wait, that was last night!  

Hot Rize first hit the bluegrass scene in the late 1970s coming out of Boulder, Cororado. "I wasn't part of it then, I was 5 when they made their first record," says Bryan Sutton, who's been playing guitar for the legendary group for over 10 years now. 

The original lineup was Tim O'Brien on mandolin, Nick Forster on bass, Pete Wernick on banjo, and guitar player Charles Sawtelle. Throughout the 1980s, Hot Rize became as big as a band could get for bluegrass at that time. Then at the height of their success, they disbanded. They later enlisted Bryan Sutton to play guitar with them after the tragic loss of Charles Sawtelle. We spoke with Bryan when he was in our studio recording new guitar lessons for his students here at ArtistWorks, wanting to get his unique perspective having gone from being a fan to being in the band. 

"What they brought was a bit of a return to a tradition. It was the early 80s and you had a lot of very 80s type influence on bluegrass - things were getting a little louder, electric bass was being used. Hot Rize did have electric bass, but they also wore suits every time they did a show, and they sang around one mic which was really cool and retro at the time - nobody was doing that. Being from Colorado they kept poking at the Southeast, that was the big market to break for any bluegrass band, and being from Colorado they were sort of at an uphill battle.