For more information: Skaggs Family Records, P.O. Box 2478, Hendersonville, TN 37077, (615) 264-8877

Producer: Ernie Lee Martin

Bluegrass Rules!

Ricky Skaggs

Come “back home” with Grammy Award-winning bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs in our first segment. The Lawrence County native pays tribute to the Father of Bluegrass, Kentucky’s own Bill Monroe, and performs selections from his 1998 album Bluegrass Rules!

Skaggs has played with plenty of other legends in his career. A bluegrass prodigy, he appeared on the Flatt and Scruggs radio program at the age of 7, left high school at 15 to play mandolin with Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, became a fiddler with the Kentucky Gentlemen, played both instruments with J.D. Crowe and the New South, and spent almost four years as a member of—and arranger for—Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band. Since beginning a solo career in 1980, he has won numerous awards from the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music in addition to the Grammys.

For more information:
• Stewart Iron Works, 20 W. 18th St., Covington, KY 41012, (859) 431-1985

Producer: Donna Ross

Ironing It Out

Stewart Iron Works

The manufacture of iron and iron products was once big business in Kentucky, as furnaces around the state produced goods too heavy to haul from back East for early settlers. In the mid-19th century, Kentucky was still one of the leading iron-producing states in America. But by 1910, the industry had all but disappeared from Kentucky, having moved north to Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The Stewart Iron Works in Covington, though, has held on for more than 100 years now. The company made the prison bars for Alcatraz and other legendary institutions, and today is still turning out traditional wrought-iron fences and other goods.

For more information:
• Griendling Designs, 700 Walnut Creek Road, Elizabethtown, KY 42701, (270) 737-4875

Producer: Charlee Heaton

That’s Rich

Artist Rich Griendling

Rich Griendling of Elizabethtown is a man of many media, successfully combining careers as a graphic artist and sculptor. And his taste for the surreal and whimsical follows him home, too: In this segment, we see Rich at work and lounge a little by his reflecting pool—which is adorned with 20-foot-high drinking straws.