News4U Online

Hazel

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 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. 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 a mention of their performances in Owensboro as proof of their bluegrass street cred. 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.

Jake Quesenberry

All this globetrotting by performers of such a stereotypically provincial musical form challenges this false notion held by many that only Kentucky “hicks” and “rednecks” can appreciate, enjoy, or even perform bluegrass music. It might rightly be said that with the pervasiveness of the Internet, the international appeal of bluegrass and other forms of American roots music will only continue to grow in the years to come. In fact, 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 grew up in Kentucky, 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.