Northeast’s biggest bluegrass party set in upstate N.Y.

OAK HILL, N.Y. — Serious bluegrass fans, you had best start packing — the Northeast’s largest, most celebrated annual bluegrass party is about to begin, less than three hours away.

Actually, the truly serious bluegrass fans already are packing — or are packed — for the four-day Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, which begins Thursday. In fact, some already are camped nearby, ready to get in line for admission when the gates open at 7 a.m. Wednesday. For many people, it’s an annual summertime ritual.

Every mid-July (July 19 to 22 this year), the best bluegrass artists in the world leave Nashville and the Carolinas, Kentucky and the Virginias, Boston, Colorado and California and head to the northern Catskills.

There, on the hills of Walsh Farm, thousands of fans from all over Connecticut and the Northeast — and often well beyond — set up camp for four days at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival. People come to Grey Fox each year from 30 to 40 states and about 12 countries, said Grey Fox assistant director Mary Burdette, second in command to producer Mary Doub.

They come to listen to great music all day, see old friends, get away from their daily lives and often play great music all night.

People decorate their campsites — and sometimes their vehicles and/or bodies — for the annual Grey Fox campground parade. They cook campground goodies that they may not have made since the last Grey Fox. They dance. They laugh. They do their best to stay hydrated.

But, most importantly, they renew friendships with longtime friends who they may only see once a year.

And while the Grey Fox lineup always is stellar — this year’s includes host band Dry Branch Fire Squad, Artist in Residence Billy Strings, Del McCoury Band, Sam Bush Band, Hot Rize celebrating its 40th anniversary, Jerry Douglas, The Wood Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, Della Mae, Dailey & Vincent, Peter Rowan and Sierra Hull, among others — that’s really not the point.

In fact, many of the thousands of people who come to Grey Fox each year buy their tickets before the lineup even is announced, Burdette said.

“Of course, the lineup is important, but we don’t usually announce the lineup until a couple of months after we’ve begun selling tickets,” Burdette said. “So people, first of all, trust that the lineup will be great, and also they know that this is where they want to be the third weekend in July.”

To help them make that commitment, “One thing we’ve done is, I think we’ve always tried to make the experience better each year than it was the year before,” Burdette said.

Last year, for instance, “because people were frying on the hill in front of the main stage, and were going to other stages in past years just to get some shade,” she said, Grey Fox added a big, oversized canopy overlooking that main “High Meadow” stage.

Of course, it ended up raining a lot last year, and “there wasn’t that much sun,” she said, “but people liked that they could go there and be dry.”

Burdette said that “every year, we take an inventory, we look at our surveys, we look at what can we do,” with an eye on, “How can we make it better?”

There’s enough going on that people can’t always even get to shows by artists they really want to see because they’re busy watching someone else, somewhere else. With music going simultaneously on six stages as well as in the campground, it’s impossible to see everything.

The full schedule, posted at greyfoxbluegrass.com, also includes Molly Tuttle, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Flatt Lonesome, Songs From The Road Band, Front Country, The Hillbenders, The Lonely Heartstring Band, New Orleans Suspects, Rapidgrass, Country Current, Lindsay Lou, Ginny Mules, Mile Twelve, Joe Newberry & April Verch, Mountain Ride, Fireside Collection, Kaia Kater, Beg, Steal or Borrow and others.

(Not all of the bands are bluegrass — Grey Fox tends to mix things up. But it all seems to fit.)

All together, there are more than 175 performances at six stages and/or tents, plus extensive campground jam sessions, an emerging-artist showcase, music and dance workshops, plenty of ethnic and festival foods for sale, boutique and musical instrument vendors and a Grey Fox Bluegrass Academy for Kids — plus a stage devoted solely to children’s entertainment.

Burdette said the artist-in-residence is a new thing — and Doub and she are thrilled to have Billy Strings, “who is just taking the acoustic music world by storm. We’re very excited that he’s going to be with us Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

“You never know where he’s going to be popping up,” she said, to either sit in with people or to invite people to sit in with him.

Billy Strings is a fourth-generation traditional musician who “is technically a wizard,” she said, and “he sings great and he’s got more energy than any 12 people. Some people are calling him ‘the Elvis of bluegrass.’ ”

The good news: If you’re just learning all of this now, full-festival camping tickets had yet to sell out as of Friday, unlike in past years. So you may be able to still get one (or a few) online at greyfoxblue grass.com or by calling 888-946-8495.

Grey Fox runs Thursday through Sunday on Walsh Farm at 1 Poultney Road in Oak Hill, N.Y. Full-festival camping tickets — now at their highest “gate prices” after earlier discounts — are $235. Daily tickets without camping are available Thursday through Saturday for $85 each.

Sunday, which has great artists but an abbreviated “Taste of Grey Fox” schedule that ends by 3 p.m., is free with a donation of non-perishable food items.

Kids 12 and under are admitted free all days with a ticketed adult.

Contributed photo The view from atop the hill at the main stage of a previous Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, the largest, most celebrated bluegrass gathering in the Northeast. It is scheduled this year Thursday through July 22 in the northern Catskills.