An immeasurable portion of my musical taste has been shaped by festivals. I probably wouldn’t have become a bluegrass fanatic (at least not as rapidly or as knowledgeably) had it not been for Merlefest in Western North Carolina. My passion for New Orleans and Louisiana music was deeply influenced by visits to JazzFest. These congresses of musicians are amazing vessels of discovery, where one can sample or delve, graze or feast. If I’m fixated with say Darrell Scott and he’s at Merlefest, I can probably see him ten times in as many musical settings. They’re places where serendipity is the rule. I’ll never forget the revelatory moment when, arriving one full set early to a stage to get a great seat for Doc Watson, the act just before was a duo I hadn’t heard of called Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Combinations and collaborations form right before your eyes at on-stage jams where the resulting sounds could never have been planned or predicted. For these reasons, festivals represent music at its chemical best.
I’ve had the good fortune this year to attend two exceptional festivals that I’d never been to: the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in June, and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, from which I just returned. Resisting the temptation to address the freshest event first, I want to relive my festivals in sequence, as a requiem for my amazing Summer of ’06.
Instead of my usual early season dose of Americana at Merlefest or JazzFest gumbo, I bided my time until the middle of June to attend Telluride, an event I’d heard about and lusted over for years. Set in one of the most beautiful valleys on earth and peopled with a who’s who of progressive and traditional bluegrass artists, it was truly a time-out-of-mind, a chance to hear the world’s best string pickers playing at their most concentrated and intense. The ambience of the town and the mountains put my soul at ease and opened my ears. It helped that I was with a group of campers who were obsessed with obtaining front row seats everyday. It was a single stage event, so we only had to get up to get a cold Fat Tire ale or a plate of incredible tamales. I saw many, indeed most, of my favorite Americana acts, from Sam Bush and John Prine to Nickel Creek and Neko Case. Pure discoveries there included The Decemberists and Missy Higgins. I reported on the festival for No Depression magazine and you can read that HERE.
September brought two quasi-festivals to Nashville in the form of back-to-back conventions by the Americana Music Association and the International Bluegrass Music Association. The former started about seven years ago, and while it’s chiefly an industry event for artists, labels and others, the nighttime showcases have opened up more than ever to fans who can buy a wristband and browse, much like a miniature South-by-Southwest in Music City. I came away from this year’s events more impressed than ever with Mountain Heart, a hard-rocking bluegrass band and the Waybacks, an acoustic rock band that’s been touring with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. The Brooklyn band Hem cast an ethereal spell, and I got my first taste of a grinding, powerful alt-country songwriter from Boston named Sarah Borges. Keep your ears out for her.
IBMA is a much more participatory event, in that from its opening night to its close a full week later, whatever else is going on, scores of amateurs and professionals are jamming with one another in stairwells, hotel suites and phone lobbies. It’s a conference that provides its own soundtrack and that reflects the total-immersion and hands-on orientation of its large and enthusiastic community. It moved from Louisville to Nashville last year, and so far the Nashville editions haven’t produced the same energy or epiphanic moments as the Louisville conventions, but they’ve been good nonetheless.
My real point here was originally to write about Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and I’ll do that in another post…
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