Bluegrass festival season underway: High, lonesome, and so much fun
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Bluegrass has had its ups and downs in the mainstream American music culture, but after each lull, it has come back more popular than it was before.
The music got a big boost in the 1970s when all the hippies going to rock festivals discovered how much fun could be had at bluegrass festivals. This was a generation that took its music very seriously and they were quickly won over by the virtuosity of Earl Scruggs’ banjo playing and the musical genius of Doc Watson. By 1972 when the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” featuring Mother Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, and Merle Travis, bluegrass had officially “crossed over.”
In 2000, the soundtrack from the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou, made its way to the top of the country charts (in spite of not getting much airplay on traditional county radio stations). The soundtrack sold four million copies, won three Grammy’s and the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Album of the Year. It also introduced the uninformed to the high lonesome sound of Ralph Stanley, The Whites (singing Carter Family songs) and the newest generation of female bluegrass singers, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch.
Currently, with country music going pop, many people are turning to bluegrass and old time music for its authenticity. The bluegrass festivals of today include big money productions like the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. Subsidized by the late Warren Hellman, in 2014, the free festival drew 750,000 people over four days to Golden Gate Park. At the same time, there are plenty of small festivals, including our own Raccoon Creek Bluegrass Festival held in July in Dallas, Georgia.
In addition to the music, a bluegrass festival is just one heck of a good time, from getting there -- the festivals are held in some of the most beautiful settings in the country and they are reached by and large along scenic byways -- to being there -- whether you stay in a local hotel, or camp in a tent or RV.
But the magic often comes not when the stage is lit and the crowds are hollering, but in the evening when the stage goes dark and you begin to hear pickers tuning up around the campfires that dot the camp. This is when you get it. You get that you have discovered one of life’s most rejuvenating moments: Sharing an acre or 10 of land with dozens or hundreds of strangers who have come together with only one agenda, to create a community sustained by pure music.
Bluegrass music reaches into your gut and saws its way right through your heartstrings. The moment a fiddle reaches the zenith of its most high and lonesome note feels the same as watching a sunset or moon rise. It feels so good that it makes your heart hurt. But we know it’s a hurt that’s worth it. We know we’re alive.