Grey
Fox Bluegrass Festival: The past and Future of Acoustic Music
By Ross Rice
It’s
really quite simple. Bluegrass is a true family-friendly style of
music, ideal for living rooms and front porches. It’s highly
portable and doesn’t rely on electricity to be performed.
The classic Bill Monroe Bluegrass style, like the blues and jazz,
is a relatively simple structure, with easy -to-learn basic precepts
that allow players of all ranges of ability to participate. It’s
something fun that kids can do with parents, generally improving
domestic harmony. Bluegrass families stick together, make organizations
devoted to promoting the music, network and weblog, put together
festivals in the summers, and keep the genre very much alive at
the grass-roots level.
Bluegrass, as a “brand,” turns out to be working very
well for all those who eschew the over-commercial-ized (and often
crass) hoopla that passes for contemporary popular entertainment.
One might even say it’s an “anti-brand” that says,
”no mosh pits or piercing salons here, folks”....not
that there’s anything wrong with either of those. And there
is no doubt that interest is growing all around the country, thanks
partially to the growing popularity of groups like Allison Krause
& Union Station, Nickel Creek, and the String Cheese Incident.
The Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival does it up pretty darn well. The
natural amphitheatre that is the Rothvoss farm is an ideally bucolic
location for acoustic sounds. The line-up is nothing short of spectacular,
a true A-list of wide-ranging diversity. Some of it’s straight
-up old school, others pushing the bounaries in ways....well, let’s
just say it “ain’t how Bill (Monroe) woulda done it.”
CONTINUE....
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