Newsletter March 2018 – Wayne Erbsen

Wayne Erbsen – The Bluegrass Gospel Songbook

Gospel music has been an integral part of bluegrass since the early days of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Along with Bill there have been many fine exponents of it such as The Stanley Brothers, The Blue Sky Boys, Flatt and Scruggs, Doyle Lawson and Ricky Skaggs. These and many other bands have included gospel quartets in their performances and entire gospel albums have been a standard part of bluegrass.

Wayne’s book gives a comprehensive guide to the history and roots of bluegrass gospel together a simple and “painless” introduction to the music theory behind it. He goes on to explain keys, the construction of harmonies and the different voices. All is explained in an easy to understand way and it has over one hundred gospel songs with their music, punctuated by historical information about each song and the people who sang them.  

This is a great book for those who want to know more and learn about bluegrass gospel, and even for those that are not so inclined it is a great read about the music and people who brought it to us.

To order the book go to Native Ground Music and Books Here

Wayne Erbsen is a master of a number of styles of music including old-time, bluegrass, folk, Appalachian, cowboy, pioneer, railroad, gospel and music of the Civil War. As a solo performer living in Asheville, North Carolina, he plays clawhammer and bluegrass banjo, fiddle, mandolin and guitar. His repertoire is over one thousand songs. Wayne has performed at colleges, coffee houses, concert halls, historic societies, museums, clubs, and festivals both in America and in western Europe. He has recorded eighteen solo CDs and written twenty-nine instruction and song books.  Wayne has appeared on Sesame Street and his music has been selected to be distributed by NPR’s Wireless Catalog. Many of Wayne’s recordings have been included on numerous educational interactive CDs including American Heritage’s CD of the Civil War and Microsoft’s Encarta 2004. He has won numerous prizes at fiddler’s conventions including 1st place clawhammer banjo (Galax, Virginia, 1973) and 1st place senior old-time fiddler (Fiddler’s Grove, NC 2004).