News4U Online

            Back in the late 90s, being a bit of a music aficionado, I used to spend a lot of time online finding, among other things, rare bootleg recordings you couldn’t find on store shelves. Fortunately, the Internet held a seemingly endless network of like-minded people looking to expand their own libraries by trading something they had for something you had.

            My first trade was with a guy in Wales who had seemingly every unauthorized live Willie Nelson and John Prine recording ever captured. He also had a vast selection of rare bluegrass and roots music to trade. Another trader I encountered lived in Belgium and had a similarly vast selection of country and roots music, including bluegrass. That was the first time I realized that this “hillbilly music” I’d grown up with was more than just a regional phenomena; it was global, and it boasted a following as rabid and obsessive as anything I’d ever seen. Right beside detailed listings of Phish, The Dead, Hendrix and Nirvana bootlegs, they had rare Carter Family recordings, Flatt and Scruggs, Doctors Boggs and Watson, the Guthries, Johnny Cash, and even Bill Monroe.

Doyle

            Years later, I met my wife, who came to me, like many of those old bootlegs, from all the way from across the sea in England. (I didn’t trade for her, if that’s what you’re thinking.) Imagine my astonishment when I found out this little ol’ English girl thought that bluegrass pickin’ was just the “dog’s bollocks” and she wanted to see some of it performed live. So, now I’m thinkin’, “where can I take my woman to see some live bluegrass music?” Well, in this neck of the woods, this time of year, there are two surefire places to go to see some real live bluegrass. One is Henderson’s Homegrown Bluegrass and Creative Arts Festival, which happens in May, and the other is the River of Music Party (ROMP), which lasts an entire weekend and takes place in the self-proclaimed home of bluegrass music – Owensboro, Kentucky – near the birthplace of Bill Monroe. The latter festival is the subject of the present article, and will soon be the subject of a nice weekend getaway for me and that aforementioned English woman.

Hazel

            From Thursday to Saturday, June 26-28, Owensboro will come alive with one of the biggest bluegrass music and documentary film festivals anywhere in the world. Each year, people flock from all walks of life and all corners of the earth to experience a weekend of bluegrass music in the Western Kentucky region from which it originated. Foremost, they come for the music, which features some of the biggest names in contemporary bluegrass – 34 bands in all – but they also come for the camping, the International Bluegrass Music Museum (IBMM) exhibits, the films, the trade show vendors, the food, the educational opportunities, and the all around peaceful and joyous atmosphere that bluegrass music encourages.

            Anyone who thinks this festival and/or the music it celebrates provincial, primitive, or otherwise the exclusive domain of uneducated hillbillies frankly doesn’t know the first thing about music. The musical form known as bluegrass is a highly developed and sophisticated amalgam of various forms of roots music that displays the sheer virtuosity of those who master it, and in recent years, as more of the world has caught on to this fact and international respect for American roots music in general has exponentially grown, bluegrass musicians, including many in ROMP’s 2008 lineup, have found enthusiastic audiences the world over, and in places not typically thought of as havens of bluegrass.

            Examples include Crooked Still, one of the bands playing on Saturday, June 28^th at Yellow Creek Park. They will have just come off an international tour of Denmark, The U.K., and Ireland when they roll into ROMP. The Infamous Stringdusters, who close out Saturday’s festivities, will have just toured of The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, The Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Another band on the ticket, Cherryholmes, will be playing the Cambridge Folk Music Festival in England later this year. Claire Lynch will be playing shows in what’s considered Neil Young turf in Edmonton, Alberta and White Horse, Yukon, Canada later in the year. Don Rigsby and Midnight Call, too, will be coming off shows in Germany and Switzerland. The group, Red Wine, is actually from Genoa, Italy – home of Christopher Columbus – and their website bio includes mentions of their performances in Owensboro as proof of their bluegrass street credentials! (There appears to be a burgeoning bluegrass movement going on in Italy these days, with other Italian bluegrass bands including Bluegrass Stuff, Lambergrass, and The Lonesome Runaways, to name a few.) And that’s just scratching the surface! Two of the other bands on the weekend’s ticket are not from the U.S.: G2 Bluegrass Band, European World of Bluegrass (EWOB) Band of the Year, is from Sweden and The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band is from Auckland, New Zealand, where they have been playing bluegrass music for over 40 years! Incidentally, they are so excited about their visit to the home of bluegrass; they will be filming a documentary of their pilgrimage to this year’s ROMP festival.

Jake Quesenberry

            All this globetrotting by performers of such a stereotypically provincial musical form challenges this false notion held by many (including many Kentuckians) that only Kentucky “hicks” and “rednecks” can appreciate, enjoy, or even perform bluegrass music. In fact, it might rightly be said that with the pervasiveness of the Internet – particularly of social networking sites like Myspace.com, internet radio stations like Radio Bluegrass International (bluegrass-museum.org/RBI.html), and public domain roots music archives like Juneberry78s.com (which is a fantastic website, by the way) – the international appeal of bluegrass and other forms of American roots music will only continue to spiral upward in the years to come, and bluegrass music will continue to be heard in apparently incongruous places.

Manners

            When asking foreigners what they know about the great state of Kentucky, world travelers have always been able to count on answers like The Kentucky Derby, Mammoth Cave, and Fort Knox, but, for all the reasons mentioned above, including festivals like ROMP, the jet-setting acts that play there, and the existence of the IBMM, which acts as a bluegrass Mecca, it has become increasingly likely you’ll hear the answer “Bluegrass Music” injected in there somewhere, especially considering the number of bluegrass festivals popping up all over Europe. According to the European Bluegrass Music Association’s website, www.ebma.org, there are no fewer than 84 bluegrass festivals scheduled on the continent of Europe in 2008!

            It seems only fitting that these musical forms that borrowed so heavily from the traditions brought over from Europe and Africa in the first place should be exported back across the oceans and run through the great musical melting pot one more time. For those of us who call Kentucky home, it’s nice to know all this to-do is about something that originated right here in our own backyard. Hope to see you at ROMP!

The Nitty Gritty:

Three Days, 34 bands, with performances held in International Bluegrass Music Museum, Yellow Creek Park, and RiverPark Center. Documentary films will be shown in the Museum. Free camping for ROMP ticket holders with tents and RVs. Tickets will be on sale at Yellow Creek Park for campers, and Park opens for camping June 22. Tickets can be bought in advance by June 16^th at significant savings by visiting bluegrass-museum.org and following the “ROMP” link, or by calling (888) MY-BANJO. Advance prices are as follows: Adult 3-day passes are $50. Single day is $20. Seniors 65 or older 3-day passes are $30. Single day is $10. Students 13 years old thru college are $30. Single day is $10. Family passes are available for $125. Family members must live in same household and limit is 5 persons per pass.