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.
Enjoy this outstanding video review from Stephen Ide of Thirsty Lizards of last July's Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival. Featured performers include Uncle Earl, Hot Rize, David Grisman, The Wilders and The Grascals, but the real star is the festival itself, the first held in a new location on Walsh Farm in Oak Hill NY. Visit Steve's YouTube page for lots of individual performances.
Grey Fox posted its jam-packed stage schedule. What a weekend of bluegrass that is going to be!
Festival lineup leaf readers have been wondering why Tim O'Brien's band is billed at Grey Fox as "Cornbread Nation" while on other lineups it is labeled more generically as the "Tim O'Brien Band." Now we have word from Tim himself that the band comprises Danny Barnes (banjo, electric guitar, vocals), Casey Driessen (fiddle), and Dennis Crouch (bass). That still leaves the naming mystery unresolved since it's same configuration that will play Telluride.
Our hunch is that Tim is using a naming convention that matches his two recent CDs, in which Cornbread Nation used electric instruments and Fiddler's Green was all-acoustic. If so, we might expect the Telluride listing to be updated and other O'Brien dates (such as Kate Wolf, perhaps) to be billed as "Tim O'Brien & Fiddler's Green."
But maybe that is just too much navel-gazing, since the official Tim O'Brien site makes no distinction on its On Tour page, listing all dates as just "Tim O'Brien" (except for those with sister Mollie). Another explanation is that the Grey Fox marketing people are just being creative.
Welcome to Grey Fox attendees who may be new to Festival Preview, courtesy of the very prominent link to Festival Preview from the artist page of the Grey Fox web site. And kudos to the festival management for the very attractive redesign of the site (and for providing the link).
To provide news for Grey Fox-goers, we've resurfaced our GFBF lineup preview article on the FP home page, and we expect to provide more Grey Fox-specific content in the near future. You'll also want to check out our interview with Del McCoury, who will be back on the hill this year.
