RALEIGH -- North Carolina may or may not be the home of bluegrass. But for at least three years, it will be home of the World of Bluegrass.

As expected, the International Bluegrass Music Association announced on Wednesday that it will bring its weeklong convention and awards show to Raleigh for a three-year run starting in 2013. Russell Johnson and the Grass Cats opened and closed Wednesday's announcement ceremony on downtown's City Plaza by playing "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and other bluegrass classics.

But the big moment was mayor Nancy McFarlane unveiling a banner showing Raleigh's World of Bluegrass dates. Comprising a four-day business conference, an awards show and a three-day "Bluegrass Fan Fest" with more than 60 acts, next year's Raleigh edition of IBMA will be Sept. 23-29, 2013.

The 2011 convention's events in Nashville drew a reported 16,000 total visitors, more than half from out of town. Raleigh city officials project similar figures for next year's World of Bluegrass, estimating the local economic impact at more than $9.9 million.

On Wednesday, various speakers touted the event's bottom-line potential as well as North Carolina's illustrious bluegrass history. Earl Scruggs, Red Smiley, Doc Watson and George Shuffler are among the North Carolina natives who are in the IBMA's Bluegrass Hall of Fame, and Brevard's Steep Canyon Rangers shared the IBMA's artist-of-the-year award with Steve Martin last year.

Since 2005, the IBMA's World of Bluegrass has been in Nashville, where it's one of many awards shows. Seeking a higher profile, the IBMA board has been looking to relocate the show. More than a dozen cities made overtures, with Raleigh, Nashville, Cincinnati and Louisville, Ky., emerging as major contenders.

"One thing that really sold us on Raleigh was all the options here and how compact they are," said IBMA board member Jon Weisberger. "We don't have to choose whether or not to do shows indoors or outdoors, we can do both. And the convention center, amphitheater and other venues are all right here."

The Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts complex will also be a venue, along with other downtown nightclubs and Fayetteville Street. New IBMA board member William Lewis likened World of Bluegrass to Hopscotch, the successful rock festival that happens every September in Raleigh.

"We think this will be like a bluegrass version of Hopscotch," said Lewis, who is also executive director of Raleigh-based PineCone (Piedmont Council of Traditional Music). "It's an event that will seize the synergy of downtown and engage audiences and venues beyond just music -- photographers, artists, galleries. It could be a signature event for downtown."

For the second straight year, an act with Triangle connections will be center-stage at next February's Grammy Awards. Where it was Arcade Fire this past year, next year it will be Bon Iver -- whose frontman Justin Vernon used to call Raleigh home.

Bon Iver scored nominations in the prestigious record and song of the year categories for "Holocene," a track from the group's eponymous 2011 album. That was part of a four-nomination haul including best alternative album and even best new artist.

The latter category is odd because "Bon Iver" was the group's third release -- and its first two both made the top half of the Billboard 200 album sales charts. One of the other best-new-artist nominees also has North Carolina connections, Fayetteville rapper J. Cole, nominated on the strength of his chart-topping album "Cole World: The Sideline Story."

Industry observer Sean Ross, executive editor of the Ross On Radio newsletter, cites Nicki Minaj as this year's worthiest best-new-artist nominee. But he predicts that Minaj won't win because she and J. Cole "will cancel each other out," which might allow Bon Iver to sneak in there the way Arcade Fire did for album of the year back in February.

"Then it's Bon Iver's people-who-propelled-Arcade-Fire vote versus The Band Perry's combination mainstream-audience vote and the never-insigificant 'I don't really follow new music but I hear they're good' vote," Ross said.

The nominations were announced Wednesday night at a Grammy concert at Staples Center in Los Angeles, where the awards will be presented Feb. 12. As expected, Adele's top-selling "21" album led the field with six nominations. Bruno Mars, Mumford & Sons, Rihanna and Lady Gaga all picked up multiple nominations in the major categories, too.

As for other nominations of North Carolina interest:

Eric Church, an Appalachian State alumnus from Granite Falls, was nominated for best country album, up against a field including Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum and Jason Aldean.

North Carolina School of the Arts alumnus Jim Lauderdale, a two-time winner in past years, earned a nomination for best bluegrass album -- and also appears on a Tom T. Hall tribute album nominated for best children's album. Among Lauderdale's competition in the bluegrass category will be Brevard's Steep Canyon Rangers, sharing a nomination with comedian/banjo player Steve Martin.

Asheville guitarist Warren Haynes, a veteran of Gov't Mule and Allman Brothers, was nominated for best blues album.

Durham-based Merge Records, which captured last year's best-album Grammy with Arcade Fire, picked up a best-recording-package nomination for the expanded deluxe version of the same album. Zooey Deschanel, who records with M. Ward as the Merge duo She & Him, was also nominated in best song written for visual media, for the "Winnie the Pooh" song "So Long."

Marsalis Music, the label of Durham jazzman Branford Marsalis, scored in the category of best large jazz ensemble album for "Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook."

Levon Helm's live album "Ramble at the Ryman," nominated for best Americana album, includes "Anna Lee," written by Greensboro's Laurelyn Dossett. That song has already been on one Grammy-winning album, Helm's "Dirt Farmer," which won best tradtional folk album in 2008.

ADDENDUM: Another nominee with local connections is recording engineer Miles Walker, who grew up in Raleigh and mostly works out of Atlanta. Walker engineered records that scored a total of eight nominations, including hits by Rhianna, Katy Perry and Wiz Khalifa, sharing the nomination on two of them -- Rhianna's album-of-the-year nod for "Loud," and Perry's record-of-the-year nomination for "Firework."

SECOND ADDENDUM: I received a pretty detailed response about who does and does not qualify as a "new" artist in Grammyland from another industry pundit, former USA Today music editor Ken Barnes. I'm fascinated in wonky stuff like this, so I'm passing along the whole thing:

As a 25-year Grammy voter, I've watched the definition of a new artist "evolve" from super-strict (one prior guest appearance on someone else's album disqualified Whitney Houston from new-artist consideration in the '80s) to the current, almost-anything-goes guidelines.

It's basically a wording problem at this point; if the category were called "best emerging artist" or "breakthrough artist" or something like that, it wouldn't be such a communications problem. Basically what the Grammys try to do is establish whether, with a particular album, an artist has achieved a breakthrough to the general public. If Bon Iver was considered a critical/indie/minority-taste hit prior to this record, then the Grammys would declare them eligible. If the Academy felt a breakthrough had occurred with a previous record, based on sales, airplay, critical acclaim, buzz, mass acceptance, etc., then no.

With only rather generally worded guidelines, it's always dicey, and standards tend to waffle. So there's always one or two "new artists" that stick in journalists' craws, for good reason.

By David Menconi
Staff writer
DURHAM -- Back when he made his bones doing standup comedy, Steve Martin used to demonstrate why the banjo is the happiest of all instruments. He'd plunk out a tune on his banjo while crooning, "Oh death and grief and sorrow and murder" -- and yeah, it came out sounding kinda joyful.

But that was nothing compared to his Saturday night show at the Durham Performing Arts Center. Backed up by the Brevard bluegrass quintet Steep Canyon Rangers, Martin was musically and comedically droll from the moment he strode onstage in the white suit that has long been his trademark.

"Thank you and good night," he said in response to the audience's standing ovation, drawing the first of many laughs. "We're going to start with a song we have completely memorized!"

Almost all of the 22 songs they played during the two-hour-plus set were Martin's originals, including the opening "Pitkin County Turnaround." Everyone on the front line took a solo, including Martin himself, establishing his musical credibility right off the bat.

Martin is more than solid as a banjo player, although he's not as technically polished as the Rangers. The main difference comes across more obviously live than on-record, in that he's more self-conscious and less at-ease. He spent a great deal of time between songs tuning and struggling with capos on his four different banjos ("Because I have four very small penises," he quipped at one point).

"I'm out of tune," he said at one point. "No, I am in tune -- I was just playing badly!"

No, he did just fine. And the good part about the tuning intervals was that they gave Martin ample time to tell jokes, often with the Rangers as collective straight men. Introducing the breakup song "Jubilation Day," Martin asked rhetorically if they'd ever had anyone in their midst they desperately wanted to get rid of; the Rangers' wordless postures made for one of the best jokes of the night.

Other highlights included "Wally on the Run," a song about a game of fetch that concluded with an actual dog running onto the stage; Martin's recurrent jokes about Rangers guitarist Woody Platt's name (which he said sounded like it came from a "Bluegrass Name Generator"); "Atheists Don't Have No Songs," a gospel-style a capella tune sporting what might be the greatest terrible vocal in music history; and an encore version of "Orange Blossom Special" featuring virtuoso fiddle work from Nicky Sanders, who worked in flourishes of everything from the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" to Handel's "Messiah."

"A dilettante is someone who dabbles in things he knows nothing about," Martin said at one point. He might be a wild and crazy guy, but Martin ain't no dilettante.

david.menconi@newsobserver.com or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or 919-829-4759

You'd call Steve Martin a renaissance man, except he's more like a renaissance guy. His comedic persona is that of an exceptionally obtuse ugly American, putting across the vibe of someone who thinks he's Getting Away With Something. But Martin isn't getting away with anything -- he really is a fantastic all-around performer whether he's playing banjo or acting or telling jokes (not to mention writing). Martin plays the Triangle this weekend with North Carolina's own Steep Canyon Rangers, a show that should be both tuneful and funny. For details, see the preview in Friday's paper.

When I interviewed Chris "Critter" Eldridge last month, he made the observation, "It's funny that all comedians seem to be banjo players, too." He was mostly referring to Steve Martin, the renaissance funnyman who Eldridge's Punch Brothers have played with quite a bit this year. And Martin is bringing his banjo (and his sense of humor) to the Triangle next spring.

Martin will play Durham Performing Arts Center on March 21 May 21, sharing a bill with Steep Canyon Rangers. The show will probably take the same form as the ones Eldridge saw when Martin was touring with Punch Brothers.

"It was pretty inspiring to watch his show, which was equal parts music and humor," Eldridge said. "It was really well-executed bluegrass-based music, and then comedy time between songs. He was hilarious, really funny. I can't even describe it. But his wit was brilliant."

The "official" on-sale date is Dec. 10, with various pre-sales going on before that.

(UPDATE: DPAC released the incorrect date this morning. For the record, the show happens on May 21).

Speaking of upcoming outdoor shows, Durham's American Tobacco Amphitheatre has put out a 10-show schedule for this year's Music on the Lawn series. Sponsored by WUNC-FM's Back Porch Music, the lineup draws from the roots and Americana end of the spectrum:

April 30 -- Chatham County Line

May 21 -- Mike Cross

June 4 -- Uncle Earl

June 18 -- Kickin' Grass

July 30 -- Laura Boosinger & Josh Goforth

Aug. 13 -- Stillhouse Bottom Band

Aug. 20 -- Thad Cockrell

Sept. 10 -- Gravy Boys

Sept. 17 -- Paul Brown and the Mostly Mountain Boys

Oct. 8 -- Music Maker Relief Foundation showcase with Cool John Ferguson, Captain Luke, John Dee Holeman, others