MUSICIANS PLAY ON

Folk festival offers something for music-lovers young and old

“People can show up and play wherever they feel like. We do try to provide shade for them.”

“Looks like they have a band,” Heidi Kline said as her 3-yearold son Lucas Eastridge found a fellow ukulele play to jam with at the Blue Sky Folk Festival in Kirtland.

Wearing a “future banjo player” t-shirt, Eastridge also has

drums and a trombone at home.

“He’s crazy musical,” Kline, of Bainbridge Township said. “I just sit back and smile.”

Kline was at the Sept. 16 festival at East Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, 10848 Chillicothe Road, to help foster the interest of the son she adopted at birth. She’s getting something out of the festival too.

— Nancy Tozer, Northeast Ohio Musical Heritage Association board member

“Let’s be realistic, he’s expanding my horizons,” she said, admitting she “not a lick of musical ability.”

The event, now in its seventh year, is designed to cater to both long-time and inexperience players.

In folk music there’s a great tradition of the music getting handed down from the master to the student, Northeast Ohio Musical Heritage Association (NEOMHA) board member Nancy Tozer said.

“That’s exactly what we want to happen here,” she said.

This year there were 25 workshops where attendees cold learn everything from Irish fiddle barbershop harmonies. The increased number of classrooms — along

with good weather — is why Tozer believes the attendance at the festival appeared to be the highest ever.

“We like to focus on the education aspect and the way people get connected,” she said. “It’s the great equalizer to me.”

In addition to the workshops and the main stage concerts, “pop up” jams appeared throughout the grounds of the venue.

“People can show up and play wherever they feel like,” she said. “We do try to provide shade for them.”

NEOMHA organizes the Blue Sky Folk Festival among other events throughout the area. That includes the Lake Erie Folk Festival in Euclid with the Shore Cultural Centre.

“We like to provide opportunities for musicians and music lovers to get together,” Tozer said.

ANDREW CASS — THE NEWS-HERALD Musicians jam outside East Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Kirtland Sept. 16 at the Blue Sky Folk Festival.