Who ever heard of an indoor bluegrass festival? For that matter, who ever heard of an bluegrass festival in the winter? Well, here in the pacific northwest, we have Wintergrass, which is an indoor bluegrass festival held in February in Tacoma at the Sheraton and other nearby venues including a church and the Marriot. A subset of the band (Barb, Joe, and myself) and Laura Grace attended Wintergrass on Saturday, and we had a pretty good time.
Having been to Adventure Bluegrass last summer, we were not new to the idea of a bluegrass festival, but since the venue was indoors, we were not entirely sure what to expect. It turns out that Wintergrass is much larger and well-attended than Adventure Bluegrass was (though, to be fair, Adventure Bluegrass is under new management and they're still trying to grow it), and as such, there were a lot more shows and vendors and there were workshops, too. Being indoors, I think, makes it easier to hold lots of workshops, so I think it works.
The cost for the single day was $60 per adult, which seems steep, but probably is not bad if you attend workshops all morning and then see all the shows. However, Saturday, at least this year, was not the best day for workshops; all the really good ones were on Friday. Although we spent about eight hours at the festival, almost none of that was at workshops; I spent about 1/2 hour in the "How to get a custom guitar" workshop because it sounded interesting. We wandered around all the vendors, though, and Joe and I both entered the raffle. He was trying for the Beard Resonator, and I for the Deering Maple Blossom banjo. Who knows? I'd love to win a free banjo. Oh, and it was pretty cool that Dusty Strings, my favorite Seattle acoustic music shop, had a large booth at the festival.
So, we spent the rest of the time watching shows. We probably should have stayed and seen more shows, but frankly, by the time we were done with the three we saw before the dinner break, Laura Grace was asleep and so were the rest of our butts. Owing to that, we bailed at the dinner break.
The first show we saw was Lee Highway, which did a bunch of old-timey traditional bluegrass tunes. That meant I was tickled pink, and Laura Grace was ambivalent. They did a whole bunch of old Flatt & Scruggs tunes, including "Earl's Breakdown", which was awesome, along with some Bill Monroe and all manner of other old bluegrass standards. My favorite was "God Loves His Children", where the banjo player put down his banjo and picked up a flattop (just like Earl) to add his picking to 4-part gospel harmony. If I could learn to pick that way, Small Pet Advisory could totally do that song. In any case, I really liked this band.
The next band was Crooked Still. They're kind of a weird band; I would describe them as "newgrass". They have a singer, a banjo player, a cello player and a bass player. They border on bluegrass blasphemy, and yet I not only don't find them objectionable, I quite enjoyed their show. Laura Grace really enjoyed their show; she perked right up and paid attention the whole time. Mostly, I think she liked watching the wacky cello player who got really wild on the faster songs. We liked this band so much that Joe went and purchased two of their CDs, one of which has been looping in my card since we left the festival. Every member of the band exhibits mastery of their instrument. The cello player can really play the hell out of that thing, and the bass player was one of the best upright bass players I've seen to date. The banjo player plays with four fingers instead of the usual three you see with Scruggs style players, which gave him a speed advantage. I'd liken his banjo playing to something like a cross between Doug Dillard and Bela Fleck.
The final band we saw was Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, a band that apparently has been around for 35 years or so. They were very polished and professional. They came out on staged and immediately started up and played three songs in quick succession before any of them said anything. It was pretty impressive just how well they had their act together, given that it was still before dinner. If this was before dinner, I imagine the acts after dinner were probably quite superb. Not only were they good musicians (and I mean good), they had really good comic timing as well. I'm sad to say, I couldn't tell you even one of the songs they did, but they were all really good. I'd definitely recommend this band to anybody that likes good solid bluegrass.
So, all the shows we saw were really good. I'm a little bummed that we didn't stick around, because Uncle Earl was playing around 8:00, and I really like them. But, even if we only saw three stage shows, we got to hear a lot more music than just that. Just about anywhere you could fit three or four people in the lobby of the hotel, there were impromptu jams going on. There were all kinds of people there with their instruments (not us, we just wanted to spectate today). There was even a group of kids playing Cripple Creek. Well. As in, way better than we play it. It was both heartening and discouraging. I mean, I liked watching them and all, but these were like 7-8 year old kids, and they were good.
All in all, I'm glad we went, and I want to go next year, only next year I'm taking Friday off and I'm buying a weekend pass and I'm going to have the whole Wintergrass experience. I hope the rest of the band wants to go, too.
