Bluegrass float to roll in Pride Parade

Some in music organization object, but initial OK stands

San Francisco’s Pride celebration is going to get a little twang this year, as the California Bluegrass Association has affirmed its decision to enter a float in the parade over the objections of some members.

In January, the organization’s board had voted 10-1 to support the float, but an uproar from dissenters nearly reversed the decision.

Last week, more than 30 members came from across the state to attend the nonprofit’s board meeting in Turlock (Stanislaus County). After months of discussion and controversy, the music-picking community still couldn’t reach a consensus on whether it was OK to sponsor a float in the June 25 parade.

But total agreement wasn’t necessary, as no one introduced a motion to reverse the original decision, and the float proposal was allowed to proceed.

“I was really, really concerned, even though I knew most of the members were

for it,” said San Francisco region Vice President Ted Kuster, 53, a technical writer at Salesforce who plays banjo in four bluegrass bands, including the Beauty Operators and Nobody From Nashville. “We knew we were going to have to step up on this. The bottom line is that we are rolling. We are going forward with it.”

The movement, as some members now call it, has breathed new life into an organization often derided for its conservative slant and unwillingness to participate in the “political” arena. (In the past, some members objected to women participating.) Hundreds of posts have clogged the association’s message board, with some members comparing the Pride Parade to a Ku Klux Klan or National Rifle Association rally.

But many more have applauded the San Francisco region’s attempts to be more inclusive and draw in new members. The $25 annual memberships have been selling as quickly as rainbow flags in the Castro. Kuster estimates the group has signed up about 100 new members in the past month.

Its GoFundMe campaign to pay for the float is hundreds of dollars above the $10,000 goal — the association itself isn’t contributing. And a cluster of household bluegrass names, like singer-fiddler Laurie Lewis, award-winning singer-guitarist Molly Tuttle and fiddler Brandon Godman, are playing at a benefit concert May 5 at Ashkenaz in Berkeley. The tickets are selling on a sliding scale from $10 to $20.

“Some members of the California Bluegrass Association will have a harder time accepting new ideas and welcoming people of different color, religion and sexual orientation, or gender identity, but, eventually, they’ll get over it,” said singerguitarist Kathy Kallick, the leader of her own band. “The CBA will thrive with all the new membership and enthusiasm because it’s always all about the love of the music.”

About one-third of the nonprofit association’s members live in urban areas along the coast, like Los Angeles, Marin and Santa Cruz counties, with two-thirds living in Central Valley towns and the foothills above Sacramento. Some of those members, like Jeanie Cooper Ramos, remain unhappy about the float.

Ramos, 72, dropped her membership from the organization of nearly 10 years after learning about the Pride Parade float. The guitarist from Brentwood, self-described as a born-again Christian, said she saw it as supporting a political agenda.

“The people who are for it don’t see it as a political or social issue,” Ramos said Tuesday. “I do. If you look at all the comments on the message board, almost all of them praise the CBA for their support of — what do they call it? LGBT? — whatever. It just goes against what I think is appropriate for families. It’s a political issue.”

The lone dissenting voter on the board, banjo player and association Chairman Tim Edes, 65, maintains that the music should be a place to escape politics — not something that should be dragged into the midst of politics.

“It was great to have a place to escape the daily bombardment of such things, and because of that, it made the experience oh so much better,” Edes said of his early days in the organization. Back then “my friend told me that was an unwritten rule that we left all those things at home, that at our festivals, concerts and jams, it was about the music. We were all one, all on the same plane. And to this day, we still do the same.”

But not this year. Dissent or not, the bluegrass float will be the newest addition to the line of nearly 30 floats rolling down Market Street this summer. Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn