How We Took Over IBMA: World of Bluegrass

Marcel Ardans

With IBMA World of Bluegrass 2024 fast approaching I can’t help thinking about how this will be the last year I’ll get to experience this event here in Raleigh, NC. That’s right, if you didn’t already hear the news, the yearly IBMA gathering will be relocating to Chattanooga, TN in 2025. I’m sure Tennessee will be a great new home to the festival and conference, I have every intention of attending, despite having to drive a little further.

I’ve attempted to cover IBMA every year for the last six years. In 2018, my first IBMA, I did a two part vlog. This was before realizing I was terrible at vlogging (Part 1, Part 2). In 2019 I did a one part vlog that I think captured the atmosphere a little more successfully. Of course, 2020 is the year we don’t speak of. Sadly, IBMA World of Bluegrass was canceled that year due to COVID-19. In fact, 2021 was a strange year, as well. All IBMA events were greatly scaled down and masking was required indoors. I decided not to film that year because it didn’t feel like the festival I’d grown to love. As luck would have it, in 2022, IBMA World of Bluegrass coincided with Hurricane Ian. All stages were moved inside the Raleigh Convention Center (this level of intimacy for the festival greatly contrasted with the social distancing of the year prior). The power flickered all weekend as insane wind and rain whipped around the Raleigh Marriott City Center. If I remember correctly, I intended to film this year but with the entire event moved into near echo chambers that was a logistical nightmare. This was a real bummer for me as I had preemptively even filmed a video talking about who might win Guitar Player of the Year. Other than a few shorts with Hillary Klug, Sierra Hull, and Jake Eddy the weekend was a bust. I even had to change halfway through the festival because it was impossible not to get soaked walking in from your parking spot. At this point it had been three years since things felt like their original glory.

Artist-In-Residence

Which brings us to 2023, last year was something special. The LWM YouTube channel tripled in popularity since I started covering IBMA World of Bluegrass and I started attracting some higher profile guests and invitations. This culminated in IBMA reaching out and inviting me to help run a guitar contest and become the year’s artist-in-residence. Hillary Klug had been 2022’s artist-in-residence and filmed hundreds of pieces of content so I knew I had to bring my A-game. I created a shoot schedule and began emailing, texting, and calling guests. Our shoot schedule started at noon on Wednesday and ended at 9pm on Saturday. When filming started LWM teacher, Mickey Abraham, was actually getting mad at me because I kept forgetting to eat. It was the most productive my team has ever been. LWM teacher Andy Hatfield actually recently told me he enjoyed how laidback my leadership was during the whole process. I suspect Andy Hatfield might have received a serious head injury in the last year and has forgotten how stressed I was. All of this on top of having a newborn at home!

This year LWM teacher Hayes Griffin has taken up the mantle of guitar contest runner and artist-in-residence. Congratulations Hayes, you deserve it. Hayes has stated explicitly that he won’t be overworking himself like Hillary Klug and myself. I can’t blame him and in honor of his ability to create a healthy work-life balance, I’m going to chronicle the LWM team’s 2023 IBMA experience because the team deserves the recognition.

The Pre-IBMA Shoot

This whole thing started with a lot of phone calls and a lot of communications between IBMA, Martin Guitars, and myself. These calls were almost all about the unnamed (frequently renamed) guitar contest that we would be hosting the conclusion of live at IBMA World of Bluegrass. The event now has an official website and it looks like they’ve landed on the title I suggested, Picking for the Prize. This was the calm before the storm.

The contest announcement was the very first real thing I ever shot with Cameraman Dave who started as local fan/friend of a friend and became a regular on the channel (Dave also shot at Blue Ridge Guitar Camp 2023, Tony Rice Memorial Music Fest 2024, ROMP Fest 2024, and did almost all of the onsite shoot for IBMA 2023). My friend Blaine has a lot of property in the small town that I live in and he said we could shoot in his tobacco fields. Dave and I were out there for an hour or so and it was scorching hot. Over a year later Dave says he still has a farmer’s tan from that day. Also, the hawk that flies by in the beginning was comped into the shot but was actual B-roll that Dave caught in the field.

The prank video announcing the five finalists was my idea. It was a very hard video to film, it wasn’t easy lying to all of the finalists and I rushed the prank five times in a row because I didn’t want to see any of these players sad. I have mixed feelings about it now. I thought it would be a fun way to get people to click on a video about relatively unknown guitarists who deserve the attention. But a lot of commenters thought it was a cheap YouTube prank video. It was a tough spot to be in as a creator, how do you get people to click on something they don’t know they should care about yet? If I did it again I’d probably shoot a different video. This video was also the first time Danielle Yother appeared in a video and she would later become an LWM regular.

Wednesday

When the event finally started and the schedule was locked down I was stressed. We had too many ideas for videos and the plan was ridiculously tight. There was lots of cut content because of limited time and we still ended up with almost 50 pieces of content.

We had a ton of lights and equipment to load into the shooting room that IBMA had provided us. On Monday I had even tested the setup in my kitchen to make sure it would work. We did the load-in of all our gear on Tuesday and filming started on Wednesday. The team was myself, Mickey Abraham, Hayes Griffin and arriving on Thursday, Andy Hatfield and Cameraman Dave. The first thing we shot was the IBMA Momentum Awards. Hayes and I ditched Mickey and snuck backstage to hangout with some of the award winners and ultimately we didn’t get enough for a video. The first shoot was a bust.

Luckily, we had an interview with Tim Stafford scheduled right afterwards and it went great. Mickey Abraham interviewed Tim for about an hour and despite some audio difficulties we made a great video out of it. Tim Stafford was actually nice enough to hop on a phone call several weeks later to share some silly stories that were too risque for the cameras.

As shoots ended our guests were literally bumping into each other as we started the next video and this next video was brilliant. Maybe even my favorite from the weekend. Jake Eddy came into the room with no idea what we were going to do and I asked him to play me a fiddle tune. Then I took the guitar, removed a string and asked him to play me the tune again. This went all the way down to one string. It might be the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen a guitarist do. The guitar Jake Eddy played in this video is my D-35 and I was so busy that week that I didn’t put new strings on until Saturday morning.

As that video wrapped, several Martin Guitar employees were arriving with guitars for Hayes Griffin and Mickey Abraham to play blindfolded. Jake Eddy had such a good time filming his video that he decided to stick around for another shoot and we happily welcomed him. I’m glad he stayed because he became one of the funniest parts of the Martin video. Also, by the time this video was done I think we had been filming for about six hours including the Momentum Awards which started at around noon.

We wrapped for the day and I made it home in time to help my wife put my 4 month old, Tipper, to bed.

Thursday

I arrived early the next morning to shoot an interview with Trey Hensley. Trey was the first popular bluegrass guitarist to ever work with LWM, so he and I have always gotten along. This interview was only intended to be cut up into short form content but later on in editing I found that it made an excellent long form video as well. Luckily, we had captured some footage of Trey Hensley and Mickey Abraham jamming as we set up that morning which helped split up the sections of the interview. The best segment in the video is when I asked him to do musical impressions which he knocked out of the park. Also, my guitar still didn’t have strings on it so I’m playing Mickey’s guitar in this video and I absolutely bombed jamming with Trey Hensley at the end of the shoot. Embarrassing.

After that, Hayes Griffin and I had an hour to film the intros to all the compilation videos we shot, like the IBMA All-Star jam, Bluegrass Coalition Live and the Tony Rice Rhythm video. We shot these on Thursday because we knew by Friday the Marriott City Center would have too many fans around for us to shoot in the main hallways. We got interrupted by fans anyway, despite trying to be smart with our scheduling. After that I had to speak at a “Bluetuber” panel where Eli Gilbert, David Benedict, Hillary Klug, and myself talked to a crowd about content creation in the online bluegrass space for an hour and a half (some footage from the workshop ended up in the intro for all of these IBMA videos). I was lucky enough to steal Eli and David after the panel to get them to record their segments for the IBMA All-Star Jam and Bluegrass Coalition Live. At this point I had been filming/paneling for six hours, but we only had two hours left to film a tour of the exhibit hall before the IBMA Red Carpet/Award Show started. So Hayes Griffin and I put on microphones and Cameraman Dave followed us around the exhibit hall while Mickey Abraham waited for Andy Hatfield to arrive so he could show him in. Andy Hatfield actually arrived while we were in the middle of this shoot and I met him for the first time in person on camera.

After this Hayes Griffin and I hustled over to his hotel room so we could change for the IBMA Awards Show and Hayes Griffin, Mickey Abraham, Adam Schlenker and I all made our way to the ceremony. I obviously didn’t shoot any of this because it’s already professionally recorded but it was a pleasure to see Trey Hensley win Guitarist of the Year. I stuck around for as long as I could at the afterparty but eventually it was time to go home and I slept hard.

Friday

The next morning was the guitar contest and the start of our longest day, I was too busy running around to film any of the contest. I’ve looked around online and I don’t think anyone has posted complete footage of the contest but here’s a short I made of winner Ken Marut. All of the contestants did great and it was a pleasure to run the contest. I’m thrilled it’s continuing this year.

Immediately following the guitar contest we had an interview scheduled with Cody Kilby. This interview actually remains unedited on my hard drive. It’s one of three unreleased pieces of IBMA 2023 content. It was a great interview, I just burned out on editing content from IBMA after six months of putting out these videos. I did manage to get out a short of Cody Kilby and Mickey Abraham chatting though.

Immediately following the Cody Kilby interview, Cameraman Dave, Hayes Griffin, and Andy Hatfield went onto the street to harass strangers. Which created a very funny video that I wish had done better. Although, I think we recently perfected the formula with Cory Walker and Harry Clark of East Nash Grass.

As Hayes and Andy hustled back into our shooting room, The Acoustic Shoppe was delivering several guitars and mandolins for more blindfolded videos. And the rest of the crew was finishing shooting with Danielle Yother and Libby Lindblom for a compilation video (Libby also pulled a great prank on me). We hastily got mic’d up and set up cameras for the second blindfolded guitar shoot and we invited Danielle to hang out. This was a great choice, it really solidified Danielle as an excellent co-host for LWM content. Though she lurks in the shadows for most of the video, her infectious laugh can be heard everywhere.

This shoot immediately transitioned into the blindfolded mandolin shoot which was a bust. Andy Hatfield, Hayes Griffin, and Mickey Abraham were way too good at identifying how expensive mandolins were. It still has some very funny moments but the overall video was sadly pretty boring. Luckily, we had two incredible interviews lined up for that night.

In fact, as we finished the unreleased blindfolded mandolin video I found Chris Eldridge lingering outside of our shooting room on his phone. He was waiting to be let in so we immediately got him in the chair and started filming. I had just met Chris that year while teaching at the Blue Ridge Guitar Camp and we had hit it off. My interview with him went great and his insight into guitar and music in general is always incredibly informational and inspiring. Before we even finished shooting with Chris there was a knock at the door and in walked Jake Workman.

At the last minute I swapped in Andy Hatfield to interview Jake Workman and the two had great chemistry. I love this interview, unfortunately I didn’t get to see any of it in person. I had to leave to rush home to the family and I got to see Tipper for a few minutes before we put him down for the night. Unbeknownst to me I had created a problem for the production. When I left, I took my headphones which the crew needed for the All-Star jam segment that Workman was meant to participate in. Luckily, Workman rose to the challenge and ran back to his hotel room to find some headphones and they finished the shoot. Jake Workman is an excellent person and went above and beyond for us during that shoot.

At the end of that day we had been working non-stop for almost 11 hours. Our last day would not be that strenuous.

Saturday

We all arrived a little later than usual for our last day. The first thing to shoot that morning was “No Capo, No Problem”, a game that Hayes Griffin and I had invented months earlier. We had no idea that this would be the most fun shoot of the weekend. It really was the cherry on top to an excellent four days of production. I’m not sure what I can say other than, we played this game for almost three hours and Andy Hatfield is an absolute beast.

After we spent the day shooting B-roll, tearing down our set and finding random participants for Bluegrass Coalition Live. It was an incredibly relaxing wind down that led to the most stressful part of the entire weekend for me. I had been asked to demo a Martin guitar in front of 5,000 people for Martin Guitars and IBMA. The guitar was to be auctioned later and it was my job to demonstrate the guitar’s quality. I basically sat backstage sweating for half an hour holding that guitar and wearing a borrowed guitar strap from Jim Lauderdale, wondering what I would play when I stepped up on stage.

Luckily, I didn’t screw it up. I had a few drinks with some of the Martin Guitars and IBMA staff then went to sit on the grass with Mickey Abraham and Maddie Witler way back in the nosebleeds of the Red Hat Amphitheater. We laughed and talked and Maddie told me I sounded fine. I didn’t make it home in time to see Tipper that night but that’s okay. It was a long weekend, we shot 13 long form videos in 4 days and made 30 something shorts. If that doesn’t already sound like enough, here are three of the four compilation style videos which we shot throughout the week, one remains on the cutting room floor.