Now in its 5 year, The River City Bluegrass Festival, Friday, Saturday & Sunday, January 9, 10 & 11, 2009, is a rare chance to see the 'best of the best' in acoustic and bluegrass music. RiverCity is an interactive, move-around-and-make-friends music event. The festival, which is the largest winter bluegrass/acoustic music festival ever held in Portland, features two and a half days of non-stop music and workshops.
Entering its second year at a new site in Oak HIll NY, Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival released the beginning of a lineup as an inducement for holiday ticket purchases. Through December 31, full festival admission and camping is available at a discounted $135. The first performers named to the 2009 lineup are perennial festival hosts Dry Branch Fire Squad pllus Del McCoury Band, Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, The Steeldrivers, Crooked Still, Red Stick Ramblers and Farewell Drifters. That's a solid foundation, but we'll reserve judgment untill we see more names. FP festival page.
The independent event production team, Across-the-Way Productions, just announced exciting additions to the already colorful initial lineup for their celebrated annual music and arts festival, FloydFest. Now in its 8th incarnation, the festival will take place July 23-26, 2009 in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia. Since its inception in 2002, FloydFest organizers have prided themselves in providing a safe and welcoming ground for a global community forum, and musical showcase steeped in Appalachian roots.
Planet Bluegrass put off its Telluride Bluegrass Festival lineup announcement until after Christmas, but it rolled out an exciting preliminary lineup for RockyGrass 2009, which runs July 24-26 at the Platnet Bluegrass Ranch in Lyons CO.
With about two-thirds of the lineup named, the top headliners so far are Steve Earle & The Bluegrass Dukes, Hot Rize with Red Knuckles & The Trailblazers, Del McCoury Band and Earl Scruggs with Family & Friends. Not at all bad. There are also a bunch of descernable themes running through the program.
Hard-core bluegrass is represented by younger traditional bands like Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper and Danny Paisley & The Southern Grass in addition to Scruggs and McCoury. New grass experimentalism is also well expressed with Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, Three Ring Circle and California.
Claire Lynch, Darrell Scott and Tim O'Brien join Earle in the lineup as distinctive songwriting voices. The Kruger Brothers and Swedish stringband Väsen represent international influences, while Bearfoot, Sarah Jarosz and The High 48s signal that there is a youthful spirit coming up through the ranks. Read more »
Pacific North jamgrass mecca Northwest String Summit will be back with Yonder Mountain String Band hosting as usual July 17-19 at Horning's Hideout in North Plains OR. The festival named the dates and confirmed Yonder Mountain's role in a December 16 announcement. Tickets go on sale February 6.
YMSB will play two sets each of the three nights of the festival. They will be joined by long-time friend, multi-instrumentalist Danny Barnes. In addiiton, one of Barnes' performing projects, The Bad Livers, will appear at the Summit. The rest of the 2009 lineup will be announced at a later date. FP festival page.
With its box office set to open a week later than usual on December 10, Planet Bluegrass dribbled out a few interesting names for its 2009 lineups over Thanksgiving. The headline is an anniversary for Jerry Douglas—his 25th Telluride Bluegrass Festival—and right in time for a strong season by his new band with Luke Bula and Guthrie Trapp. Also named for the 36th TBF: Emmylou Harris, Railroad Earth and The Steeldrivers.
RockyGrass will once more have Del McCoury on the Lyons stage. Two hot traditional bluegrass bands will appear: Danny Paisley & The Southern Grass and Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper. In August, the 19th Folks Festival will feature Brett Dennen and Dougie MacLean.
More lineup announcements for all three festivals will be released before December 10.
Saturday in Lebanon, NH was cold and raw. The wind whipped through our clothes and our ears turned red as we walked across the street to the AVA gallery. Inside the gallery was warm and cozy as the afternoon’s workshops began. At 1:00 PM four workshops were attended by small, but interested groups. Steve Hennig reprised his successful banjo workshop of last year. Rich Heepe held a session called “A Bit of Festival” and Rich Hamilton attracted a couple of fiddlers to his “Fiddlin’” session. Ford Daley continued last year’s seminar trying to answer the unanswerable question, “What is Bluegrass About Anyway?” Read more »
The 2nd Annual Upper Valley Bluegrass Festival opened at the Lebanon Opera House on Friday night with performances by Rhonda Vincent & The Rage and The Jerry Douglas Band. The bitter cold did nothing to keep the near sell-out crowd of about 800 people from filling the large, yet intimate, auditorium. Lebanon Opera House is located in City Hall on the pleasant and picturesque town square of Lebanon, NH.
Nearing the end of a long season, Rhonda Vincent & The Rage gave another one of their first rate performances, although seeming a little tired and dispirited, perhaps partly because of the looming exit of longtime mainstay Kenny Ingram and fairly recent addition Darrell Webb, who are leaving the band. According to Ingram, the changes signal new, and as yet unspecified, directions for the band. Aaron McDaris, formerly of the Grascals will be replacing Ingram. Webb will join Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper in January and is being replaced by Ben Helson from Ricky Skaggs’ band Kentucky Thunder. Read more »
Ted Lehmann attended 26 music festivals in 2008—mostly bluegrass but some with a broader mission. His thoughts on the state of the market concludes with this observation:
Festivals, in order to succeed, need to reach out to a wider and more diverse audience. Varying the kinds of music, even within the label bluegrass, will help to create a more welcoming and interesting environment. Reaching out to a younger and more culturally diverse audience will increase the size and enthusiasm of audiences. Establishing clear guidelines for audiences in terms of smoking, drinking, dancing, and other behaviors and then ENFORCING them will pay off big time. Much of the festival environment is still attractive and will continue to entertain a wide variety of visitors. Camping, field picking, visiting with old friends, a range of vendors, exciting music, and a festive atmosphere all yield a good time. Thoughtful promoters will find ways to continue the traditional elements making up successful festivals while attracting new audiences through creatively altering their programs and formats. Read more »
As of today, organizers of the annual Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival are still searching for a place to hold the event for June 2009. After its first five years in Lawrence KS at Clinton State Park, the festival planned to move to a new site at Circle S Ranch in Jefferson County, 12 miles north of Lawrence, but the county commission yesterday rejected the festival's permit application to hold a festival on that site.
Festival promoter Brett Mosiman said alternative sites are under consideration. It's possible the festival could relocate outside the immediate area or even the state.
The Circle S Ranch alledgedly "lacks infrastructure to host thousands of cars and people", even though Wakarusa is far Read more »
