Catskills get rich flavor of bluegrass
Tent city springs up on opening day of Grey Fox Festival
The Daily Mail
July 17, 2009

OAK HILL — Thousands of bluegrass musicians and their fans turned the Walsh Farm in Oak Hil, into a sprawling tent city buzzing with excitement and the sounds of music for the opening of the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival Thursday.

Festival-goers tested guitars, mandolins, violins and harmonicas that were offered for sale. They learned to dance, heard stories and listened to bluegrass masters perform a range of bluegrass music from traditional Appalachian songs to Cajun pieces.

Ross Leazenby, an International Bluegrass Music Museum trustee, said each instrumentalist and singer at the festival is at the top of their craft.

“You will see people who have slept with their instruments and they know every squeak that can come out of them,” he said.

He said the festival has become one of the best events in the world of bluegrass music because of the wide variety of groups invited to play.

“The people in the Northeast are getting a real flavor here,” he said.

Leazenby is also at the festival to promote the museum, which is located in Owensboro, Ky., and its video oral history project.

One-hundred and sixty-five first-generation bluegrass musicians have told their personal histories and shared their memories with an interviewer of their choice, all recorded for the museum archive.

Leazenby said museum directors want to collect as many narratives as possible so new generations of musicians and fans can hear about bluegrass music directly from the pioneers who wrote, played and popularized it.

He said the museum is raising money to hire people to edit the interview tapes, which can seem like an endless task.

“Sometimes we are looking for a half-hour and it takes four of interview,” he said.

Leazenby said he has seen a lot of interest in the project at various bluegrass festivals this year. Ten percent of people who bought tickets online had donated $1 to the “Bucks for Bluegrass” editing fund.

And, he said, the crowds at the festival showed that bluegrass music is supported by the community in and around Oak Hill.

Leazenby and Kitsy Kuykendall, museum Board of Trustees vice chairwoman and wife of famed banjo player and Bluegrass Hall Of Fame member Pete Kuykendall, agreed that with legendary musicians including Ricky Skaggs, Pete “Dr. Banjo” Wernick and Del McCoury sharing the festival’s five stages and tents with newer acts such as King Wilkie, Red Hot Black Top and The Boston Boys, the festival has something for every bluegrass fan to enjoy.

Kuykendall said she was “crazy” about McCoury, who is celebrating his 50th anniversary in the industry with a performance Friday evening, but, she said, she was looking forward to hearing singer-songwriters Sarah Jarosz and Sierra Hull live for the first time.

She said festival Producer and museum Board of Trustees Chairwoman Mary Doub had done a good job of reaching out to musicians who have performed at other festivals such as The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, held annually in Tennessee, to expand the festival’s lineup.

She said that although Grey Fox was only being hosed by the Walsh Farm for the second year, the new location was starting to feel like home for a lot of the musicians.

Kuykendall said the activities offered at Grey Fox were designed to appeal to a wide audience with dance and yoga instructions and even bluegrass karaoke.

“It is like a full-experience festival,” she said.

She said that the museum and the festival demonstrate the evolution of bluegrass music.

“We celebrate the past, the present and the future of bluegrass,” she said.

One vendor, mandolin player Tim Finch of Eastman Strings explained the different sound quality between new and old mandolins and violins.

Mandolins made during the 1930s and 1940s were made with naturally aged wood that vibrated as the instruments’ strings were picked, plucked or strummed for a bright sound.

Finch said instruments made with plywood do not produce the same sound as instruments made with wood such as spruce and maple.

Wood for newer instruments is aged artificially in temperature- and moisture-controlled facilities, he said, adding that woods for the instruments require perfect humidity, “so the trees don’t even know they’re dead yet.”

A few yards down the grass aisle from Finch, new and old fiddle music meshed during a master class taught by six fiddlers from various groups.

The group played several tunes, passing the melody lines from player to player.

Brittany Haas of the group Crooked Still demonstrated how a bluegrass fiddler used the bottom of her bow, near where she held it, to make the strings vibrate.

Megan Lynch, who is a co-instructor of the festival’s Bluegrass Academy, explained that this style differed from the Scottish fiddle style, in which music is played by the tip of the bow.

Nate Leath explained to an audience of adults and children, fiddle-players and newcomers to bluegrass music that his group, The Boston Boys, try to incorporate the style of old-time Appalachian music with bands they enjoy, including The Band and Radiohead.

“We are trying to blend something that is original and mix that in,” he said.

Toward late afternoon, festival Assistant Director and Public Relations Manager Mary Burdette estimated that 3,000 music lovers had arrived to camp over the last few days and more would arrive as the four-day festival continued. As she spoke, a line of cars made its way slowly into a mostly-filled field designated for parking.

She said the festival incorporates up-and-coming and hot new groups into the fold of bluegrass legends because young players continually develop new styles of bluegrass.

“With every generation the music expands and grows a whole new arm,” she said.