Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen

Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen
Yes, the feel-good swing-rockers from the '70s--think "Hot Rod Lincoln"--are back on the circuit with Commander George Frayne leading a lively new unit. The band has its roots in Ann Arbor but hit it big as part of the San Francisco scene with a sound that set the stage for other bands like New Riders of the Purple Sage and Asleep At the Wheel.

Personnel: George Frayne (keyboard, vocals), Steve Barbuto (drums, vocals), Rick Mullen (bass), Mark Emerick (guitar, vocals)

Commander Cody Plymouth MA 2006



Video by 50174.

Suwannee Springfest

Suwannee Springfest
March 27-30, Live Oak FL
Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park

Magnolia Music enters its 12th season presenting a tasty mix of Americana and roots music.at Suwannee Springfest this month and MagnoliaFest in October. The idyllic north Florida music park boasts five festival stages and two campground stages, plenty of camping hookups and primitive camping. The festival adds a magic circus, song writing contest, healing arts, and low-power FM broadcasts from the Amphitheater stage.

Headliners: David Grisman Quintet, Peter Rowan, Donna the Buffalo, Railroad Earth, Guy Clark, Commander Cody, Jim Lauderdale, The Greencards, The Waybacks, The Infamous Stringdusters


Springfest 2007 slide show



Video by chrisowenvt.

Lots to like as RockyGrass lineup firms up

Planet Bluegrass announced the final slots for the 36th Annual RockyGrass Festival (July 25-27) in Lyons CO—virtuoso string duo Mike Marshall & Darol Anger and Infamous Stringdusters fiddler/vocalist Jeremy Garrett in a solo gospel set.

Highlights of the lineup are the all-new Dan Tyminski Band, old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, the folk operatic Punch Brothers with Chris Thile, plus seminal newgrass pioneers Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas and Edgar Meyer.

Younger bands are well represented with Chatham County Line, The Steeldrivers, Infamous Stringdusters Bearfoot, Stairwell Sisters and Spring Creek Bluegrass Band. Other big names are Peter Rowan, Natalie MacMaster, Sparrow Quartet, J.D. Crowe, Adrienne Young, and Psychograss.

The complete day-by-day RockyGrass lineup:

Friday, July 25
Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas & Edgar Meyer * Dan Tyminski Band * Béla Fleck & Friends * John Cowan Band * Russ Barenberg & Bryan Sutton * The Steeldrivers * Mike Marshall & Darol Anger * Spring Creek Bluegrass Band

Saturday, July 26
Natalie MacMaster * Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile * Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet featuring Béla Fleck * Psychograss * Infamous Stringdusters * Bearfoot * Chatham County Line

Sunday, July 27
Sam Bush Bluegrass Band * Carolina Chocolate Drops * Peter Rowan * JD Crowe & The New South * Adrienne Young & Little Sadie * Stairwell Sisters * Gospel Set featuring Jeremy Garrett

For complete information, visit the official site.

Jewish Music Festival to honor trumpeter

The co-founder of the seminal American klezmer band The Klezmatics, trumpet extraordinaire Frank London, will be honored at this month's Jewish Music Festival with the first annual Shofar Award, given to musicians who have made a significant contribution to Jewish music.

“Frank is without par the most prolific composer, player, and bandleader on the international Jewish music scene,” says festival director Ellie Shapiro. “Deeply rooted in klezmer, he has done more than anyone else to bend the genre in ways that connect across cultures."

London is also known for performing with artists as diverse as Itzhak Perlman, David Byrne, LL Cool J and They Might Be Giants.

The 23rd annual Jewish Music Festival runs March 22-30 in venues around the Bay Area. London performs his score for 1907 Yiddish play by I.L. Peretz A Night in the Old Marketplace in a opening night performance March 22 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley CA.

Strawberry looking sweet for Spring

Maybe a theme for Strawberry 2008 is artists playing with different configurations. Today, Ricky Skaggs was announced for Spring, where he will join old parter Emmylou Harris on the bill, along with Tim O'Brien, Peter Rowan, john Cowan and lots more. Skaggs is playing many festivals this year together with piano great Bruce Hornsby, but that is presumably not the case here.

Similarly O'Brien seems to be appearing solo, while he is a part of Hot Rize/Red Knuckles reunions at several other festivals this summer. Rowan will appear at Strawberry and other festivals with his Free Mexican Airforce instead of the quartet he has mostly toured with in recent years.

Regrettably, FP's dispute with Strawberry Music Festivals continues and we will not be at Camp Mather for the 2008 festivals May 22-25 and August 28-31. Both lineups are about half done and both offer a lot to look forward to. For Spring, I would expect a powerful debut for Cadillac Sky and I'm interested in hearing the comeback tour for Carlene Carter.

The Fall festival leads with Sam Bush, but has a number of younger bands with big-time buzz--The Avett Brother, The SteelDrivers, Spring Creek Bluegrass Band and local favorites Belle Monroe & Her Brewglass Boys. Stand by for more announcements for both festivals.

Our disagreement aside, Strawberry remains one of the very best roots festivals going. We hope to be back in future years.

Aoife in Wonderland

Crooked Still vocalist Aoife O'Donovan narrates a photo montage from Wintergrass 2008. She discusses the band's personnel changes and upcoming album, the dynamic Boston music scene and the fun of playing among friends at Wintergrass. Festival Preview presents.

Wintergrass notebook

I had been told that the Nordic roots trio Väsen, especially joined by two heros of the American progressive acoustic scene, Mike Marshall and Darol Anger, would be a special performance. But I had no idea how special.

With Olov Johansson on the traditional Swedish nyckelharpa, a multi-stringed bowed instrument that produces an amazing range of sound, and Roger Tallroth on 12-string guitar and Mikael Marin on viola, they transform traditional Scandinavian folk music (somewhat akin to traditional forms from the British Isles) into sweeping improvisational sound scapes. With Marshall and Anger inciting more experimentation, their performance was my pick of must sublime set of the festival.

* * *Given the overblown controversy about Cadillac Sky and its sound system a few month's back, I noticed the unusually long sound check before the band's set on the Marriott Stage. When Brian Simpson and company finally let loose, it was more than worth the wait. It may be a cliche, but this is bluegrass with a rock 'n' roll energy. With his mop-topped teasing manner and great vocals of his original material, Simpson has charisma to spare, plus plays a hot mandolin alongside ace sidemen Matt Menafee (banjo) and Ross Holmes (fiddle).

The band delivered its hits "Born Lonesome" and "You Can't Trust the Weatherman," and offered some material I didn't know. To me, the key differentiator in Cadillac Sky is the song-writing. Simpson has had some success on Music Row as a writer for country artists. That personal perspective plus the rock riffs give C-Sky the potential to cross into the mainstream, as suggested by the airtime it gets on country video channels.

One tidbit that may not fit with that analysis but is fascinating. Simpson said the band is set to do a record with Mike Marshall, which would imply a more musically ambitious and less poppy direction for the new project.

A word about the reconfigured setup of the festival stage in the Marriott ballroom. The room was set up more conventionally with the stage at one end of the horizontal room. Previously the stage was set up along the side wall with bleachers in a semicircle around the stage. That was an intimate setup that works well for workshops, but the new layout seems to work better for a concert set.
* * *With all the focus on younger players, I was blown away by the front porch pickiing of two veteran players, Mark Johnson on clawhammer banjo and Emory Lester on mando and guitar. "I'll try keeping up with all these youngins," Lester said, as the duo ripped into blazing double leads on "Big Scioto." Johnson said their style "is either clawgrass or bluehammer." Either way, I loved it.
* * *Another older player who impressed with just his solo instrumental guitar was Russ Barenberg, best known for his long-time collaboration with Jerry Douglas and Edgar Meyer. His medley of Cape Breton reels and somber Scottish air flowed like a river from his six-string, but the highlight was his composition "Drummers of England" with echoes of regiments of drums and fifes coming over the hill.
* * *I missed seeing The Wilders on the circuit last year, so it was a pleasure catching up with the high-energy honky-tonkers from Kansas City. The sound produced between Ike Sheldon's guitar and vocals and Betse Ellis' frenetic bow work, supported by hot dobro and thumping bass, is still intact and still unique. The band put out a limited edition EP on vinyl last year, but an upcoming full CD will bring lapsed fans like myself back up to speed. Look for it in April.
* * *The great progressive bluegrass band Seldom Scene has been living down its name this year, heading the bill at a number of winter festivals, including Wintergrass. The current configuration includes just Ben Eldridge from the original band, but it still sounds terrific on true bluegrass material like Monroe's "Blue and Lonesome" or "Old Train" by Tony Rice with Dudley Connell or Lou Reed at the mic. On some of the Fred Travers vocal numbers, the band sounds too schmaltzy for my taste. Fairly early on, when the band opens it up for requests, the audience goes wild with calls for old favorites.

With latest additions, Telluride lineup touches all the bases

The latest adds are prolific songwriter Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, legendary folkie Arlo Guthrie, and progressive bluegrass pioneers Hot Rize, the latter in a second booking for the legendary band's 30th anniversary reunion. They supplement a deep lineup of talent that crosses many genres beyond the one--bluegrass--mentioned in the festival's name. Among the lineup trends:

First-time performers: Adams and Guthrie are first-timers in Town Park. Other debuts are Scottish soul-pop singer Paolo Nutini, sweet-voiced country singer Tift Merritt and country-soul pioneer Solomon Burke.

Reunions: Beloved festival favorites Leftover Salmon and Hot Rize (with Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers) reunite for special Telluride performances.

Falling slowly: Recent Oscar winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the film Once perform both as the stripped-down acoustic The Swell Season and with one of the only 2008 dates for the Irish rock band The Frames.

Collaborations: Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby with Kentucky Thunder, Darrell Scott and John Cowan, “Duos with Friends” by banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck.

The Telluride House Band: King of Telluride Sam Bush performs for his 34th straight year. Other house band regulars are Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, and Bryan Sutton.

New generation: The younger generation of stringband musicians is well-represented, including Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile, Uncle Earl, and The Duhks.

The complete lineup:

35th Telluride Bluegrass Festival - June 19-22, 2008 – Telluride, CO
http://www.bluegrass.com/telluride

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals * Sam Bush Band * Ani DiFranco Band * Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby with Kentucky Thunder * Telluride House Band featuring Sam, Béla, Jerry, Edgar & Bryan * Arlo Guthrie * Yonder Mountain String Band * The Swell Season: Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova from the film Once * Hot Rize with Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers * Paolo Nutini * Béla Fleck, Duos with Friends * Tim O’Brien * Del McCoury Band * Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile * Peter Rowan & the Free Mexican Airforce * Leftover Salmon * Jerry Douglas Band * The Frames * John Cowan & Darrell Scott Band * Edgar Meyer * Brett Dennen * Tift Merritt * Uncle Earl * The Emmitt Nershi Band * Solomon Burke * The Duhks * Cadillac Sky * Steep Canyon Rangers * Spring Creek Bluegrass Band

Great Southern steps up to replace cancelled Suwannee fest

Here's an excerpt from Ted Lehmann's latest on the winter bluegrass circuit. The full report is here:

It’s a sad event when a scheduled festival has to be postponed or cancelled. The Spirit of Suwannee Bluegrass Festival had been scheduled for the weekend of March 20 – 22, but it was cancelled. Promoter Don Miller tells me the cancellation was necessary because of inadequate pre-registrations and lack of sponsorship. My hunch says that Spirit of Suwannee Music Park was less than enthusiastic about this event, scheduling a large canoe festival for the same weekend and putting its emphasis onto Springfest coming the following one. Beer sales for Springfest are huge! Thus a fine festival with a varied lineup and a quality venue has gone down the tubes.

Fortunately, Miller’s co-promoter, North Florida’s Ernie Evans has stepped into the breach and arranged for a festival called “The Great Southern Bluegrass Festival” and held at Picker's Paradise Park in Ochlocknee, GA (near Thomasville) on March 21 – 22. The headliner will be Grasstowne, a band only a little over a year old, but creating a buzz across the nation at concerts and festivals as well as through its hit CD “The Road Headin’ Home.”

Reconfigured Duhks return to Tacoma

[Photos by David Conklin]

With all the recent personnel changes in the lineups of progressive acoustic bands, this was my first chance to catch up a band that started the trend already a year ago. That would be The Duhks, where Sarah Dugas replaced Jessica Havey as lead singer. More recently, Dugas' brother Christian has joined in on drums, replacing former percussionist Scott Senor (although they will apparently use both drummers on occasion, as they did on the recent Cayamo cruise).

The Duhks are one of the bands that have led the wave of so-called "new traditionalists," mixing folk styles from various world cultures with a heavy dollop of rock and roll energy. The Winnipeg MB band has been a hit on the roots festival circuit for several years now, including at two earlier Wintergrass festivals.

After missing them at the festivals I attended in 2007, I was anxious to see how the personnel changes affected the sound and personality of the band. As a bonus, the band has a new CD in the works, and I also got to sample The Duhks' new material.

Dugas certainly has the pipes for fronting the band—good range, tone and projection. Her duets with fiddler Tania Elizabeth, who now gets a more prominent supporting role, were very fine. It is not as clear that her personality and image meshes as well, however.

Not that I would expect her to match Havey in the body art department, but there is something rebellious about The Duhks' persona and Dugas seemed possibly too conventional for the part.

Mannerisms aside, The Duhks' music was true and consistent in the older material, and the new songs (a new album is on the way) build on the band's sound rather than depart from it.

They kicked off both sets I saw with a rocking "Fast-Paced World," which seems to describe both the band's international lifestyle and its up-tempo musical attack. As much as Senor added to the band with his variety of percussion instruments, the addition of a full-blown drum kit serves to amp up the proceedings even more as they swung next into the Afro-rhythmic "Old Cook Pot" from the last CD.

Next they displayed their more lyrical quality, taking on the harmonies and catchy hook of "You Don't Feel It," written by Dan Frechette, who also penned the group's hit "Mists of Down Below." That might be the single to look for on the new record.

At this point in the show, the previously quiet band leader Leonard Podolak stepped up leading an instrumental medley and a fun sing-along about all all-night interstate car ride, "95 South Cackalack," which seems destined to be a trademark. He also entertained the crowd with his implsh stage banter.

As mentioned, Elizabeth seems to be playing more of a role vocally, but her main thing is her hotshot fiddling. She and guitarist Jordan McConnell took a thrilling instrumental duet, and then set the rhythm on the Cajun-flavored "Down to the River."

The overall impression I came away with is that The Duhk's sound and musical identity remains consistent despite a 40 percent turnover in personnel. They are also one of the hardest working acoustic bands, touring worldwide and appearing at festivals large and small.

I may catch them next at Festival International de Louisiane, the Francophone fest in Lafayette LA where they should fit especially well. I hope to have a follow up then.

Oh, what a (Friday) night at Wintergrass

Three of the most highly regarded progressive acoustic bands, each with a new record in the can but not yet released, previewed their new material in a glorious evening of music Friday night on the Wintergrass main stage. The show featuring Crooked Still, The Infamous Stringdusters, and Punch Brothers with Chris Thile burnished this festival's growing reputation as a prime venue for innovative acoustic string music.

To be sure, Wintergrass presents straight-ahead bluegrass as well. The early evening program at the Pavilion Stage presented mainstream stars Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper and Bobby Osborne & The Rocky Top X-press. Cleveland's band is full of hot pickers, not least the fiddling front man who has notched numerous IBMA honors, but the set seems packaged as an act, lacking the kind of spontaneity we would shortly be hearing. At 79, Osborne is a delight as a surviving bluegrass pioneer, but you don't see him expecting anything new.

Crooked Still
With the traditional bases covered, Wintergrass then brought out the musical firepower. First up was Crooked Still, reconfigured with Tristan Clarridge on cello in place of wild man Rushad Eggleston and with semi-regular special guest Casey Driessen on fiddle. Another new member, Brittany Haas, was not on hand, however.

As did each of the three bands, Crooked Still featured its new material while mixing in favorites from previous albums. As usual, the focal point in the band is vocalist Aoife O'Donovon, whose whispery voice and collaborative band leadership sets the tone for the proceedings. Probably the big question was how Clarridge would fit as Eggleston's replacement. The answer is that he delivers all of Rushad's trademark chops and that he adds an improvisational lyricism as an added dimension.

Of course, he could never match Rushad's personality and wisely doesn't try, letting his bow work speak for itself. Clarridge is a string-band prodigy, having won numerous fiddle championships beginning at a very young age. Now 23, he began playing cello a few years ago. In an interview with Festival Preview last month, he described himself as a follower of Eggleston's cello playing style.

The interplay of low sounds coming from Clarridge's cello and Corey DiMarco's bass, the treble coming from Driessen's artistic fiddling, and the staccato of Greg Liszt's banjo produce a unique sound, especially layered over with O'Donovan's vocals. Rushad is a unique talent, but Crooked Still will now play more as a unit without his outsized presence.

O'Donovan returned the favor from Tuesday night and had Sarah Jarosz join in on a couple of songs, including a new original by O'Donovan, "Low Down and Dirty." That was one of the highlights of the set that we can expect to see on the new album in a few months. A couple of others that stood out were "Captain Captain," "Tell Her to Come Back Home," and Robert Johnson's "Last Fair Deal Gone Down." Other new material continued the band's formula of reworking traditional folk material.

The Infamous Stringdusters
Next up was The Infamous Stringdusters, fresh off one of the hottest album debuts in recent memory. Last fall, the band picked up IBMA awards for album of the year and new band of the year. The sextet played Wintergrass a year ago, and last night marked their triumphant return.

The 'Dusters also had a recent band personnel change, with Andy Falco replacing hot guitar picker Chris Eldridge (who joined Punch Brothers, coming up next on stage). Falco delivers all the licks and superfast runs Eldridge supplied, ably holding down the guitar seat in an amazing instrumental ensemble that also includes Chris Pandolfi on banjo, Jeremy Garrett on fiddle, Jesse Cobb on mandolin, Andy Hall on dobro, and Tavis Book on bass.

Book, Garrett and Hall trade off on lead vocals, adding to the ensemble direction of the band. More than half of the set was new material, with a few of the hits from Fork in the Road interspersed. The new stuff is all over the map, but the common denominator is the improvisational opportunities each song provides.

Several times, the jams veered into jazzy territory and occasionally into rock and roll. Each musician is impressive, but it seems to be Pandolfi who most often leads the band into unexpected forays. They closed with an jazz instrumental encore, "Moon Man" by Pandolfi, that was a delight. Expect that along with a host of great new vocal numbers on their new album due in June.

Punch Brothers
At this point, I am thinking, how can Chris Thile's new act top those two wonderful sets? The answer is by venturing even further out into musical abstraction. The centerpiece of the performance would be the third and fourth movements of Thile's ambitious newgrass suite, "The Blind Leading the Blind," which is also the core of Punch Brothers' new album due out next week. (The band played the first two movements in an earlier set at the Church Stage that I missed.)

Punch Brothers is the new name for Thile's band, previously known as How to Grow a Band and including Eldridge on guitar, Noam Pikelny on banjo, Gabe Witcher on fiddle, and Greg Garrison on bass, in addition to Thile's incomparable mandolin. If the Stringdusters start in bluegrass and veer into jazz, Punch Brothers starts in jazz and veers into avant-garde classical. This was my first hearing of the suite, which is a piece that will require multiple listenings to fully understand.

The suite is Thile's tour-de-force individual composition, but the rest of the material in the set and on the album is collaboratively written by all the band members, some as abstract as the suite but some grounded in familiar melodies and styles. The night closed with an encore of "Ophelia," the great song by The Band, with Gabe Witcher singing the part of Levon Helm. Wonderful.

As the happy audience filed out out of the Pavilion, many to head for the late-night dance venue or to post-midnight jams in the hotel, I had a sudden realization that this may have been the most exciting evening of music I have ever witnessed on a festival program. Oh, what a night!

Laura Love "represents" with Black and Bluegrass program at Wintergrass

There was plenty of representing and testifying at Wintergrass on opening night, with three bands exploring the "Afro-American roots of bluegrass," as hometown folk diva Laura Love described the program she curated. And while there may have been a little more funk involved than in a standard night of bluegrass, the program made a convincing case for the relationship between black music forms and the old-time mountain music that developed into the genre known as bluegrass.

But if that sounds like it was an academic exercise, it wasn't. Actually, beyond describing the idea for the program, Love did relatively little talking. Mainly the music—from Love's new ensemble Harper's Ferry, the Ebony Hillbillies and Ruthie Foster—spoke for itself.

The Ebony Hillbillies were a late replacement for the scheduled Carolina Chocolate Drops, who had to cancel. While the Hillbillies were fresh and fun, the night lost some context without the Drops, who regularly talk about the history of black string band music in their performances.

Love said she approached the festival with the idea because she is accustomed to performing at events like Wintergrass, Merlefest and Telluride, where she is frequently the only person of color performing. "But I have been noticing there are more and more black musicians reclaiming this music," she said.

Reclaim it they did. The three bands offered a range of Afro-American music styles such as blues, gospel, and old time presented with acoustic string instruments (except for Love's own electric bass) that clearly were influences on and influenced by bluegrass.

Love's Harper Ferry kicked off the night with a six-piece band featuring Orville Johnson on guitar (Love said he as an "honorary Negro"), plus banjo rapper Turbo, Tanya Richardson on fiddle, Tory Trujillo on backup vocals and Clifford Ervin on the bones. Their set began with traditional material like "Cuckoo" and "Cotton-Eyed Joe" before moving on to spirituals like "Eyes on the Prize" and "We Shall Not Be Moved."

Looking and sounding like a latter-day Dave Van Ronk, Johnson impressed with his fine guitar work and high-harmony vocals, especially when he was featured on "Nobody's Fault But Mine" and Bill Monroe's classic "Working On a Building."

For an encore, banjo player Turbo led on a funky-chicken version of "Cluck Old Hen" that brought down the house.

Next up were the Ebony Hillbillies, a little known group of New York street musicians who present a more urbanized style of African string music, if that makes sense. They say that they hail from the "concrete hills of New York City." Their lead instruments are fiddle, banjo and mountain dulcimer, with bass and percussion backup.

I think it is not accurate to compare them with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who play a more authentic but also a more studied form of mainly banjo-based music. Still they have an original and welcome new sound that adds to the texture of contemporary black acoustic music.

>The closer was Ruthie Foster, who lived up to her "phenomenal" billing with a strong set of eclectic material and lots of stage personality that entertained the late night audience. Backed by a bass and drums, she performed traditionals, covers of Mississippi John Hurt and Son House, an amazing reworking of Stephen Foster's "O' Susannah," and several of her own numbers, including a delicious imitation of Sam Cooke.

Her story about blues singer Jessie May Hemphill shooting a hole in her Gibson guitar was a great introduction for Hurt's "Richland Woman Blues." Now I know that Richland is a section of Memphis where the night life used to be. Any dude will do, indeed.

Foster finished with a rousing take of Son House's "Grinnin' In Your Face," with Love joining her on stage for a howling finish to an original and provocative night of music.

Sarah Jarosz impresses as Wintergrass opener

Wintergrass has been a champion of the youth movement in acoustic music—not just the crop of young bands like The Duhks, Infamous Stringdusters and Crooked Still who are playing here this weekend, but also the amazing bluegrass prodigies who we have watched grow up at Wintergrass and a few other festivals.

One of those kids is Sarah Jarosz, the 17-year-old Texan who first gained notice for her mandolin picking but is now emerging as a full-blown performer on every acoustic instrument but especially as a singer-songwriter. Jarosz opened the Wintergrass festival Thursday night fronting a musically inventive trio including teen prodigy compatriots Alex Hargreaves on fiddle and Sam Grisman on bass.

Jarosz alternated among banjo, guitar and her trademark mandolin on a series of her own compositions, both vocal arrangements and instrumentals, as well as some well chosen covers.

Like any young vocalist, she takes a risk singing love songs, but she comes close to convincing on the couple she tried. In her classy blue dress and high boots, she is emerging not only as a musician but as a young woman, a perspective best expressed in an original song performed solo on guitar, "End of a Dream," about wanting to figure life out, which she said was written only days ago.

After the solo, the band came back with special guest Aoife O'Donovan from Crooked Still, whom Jarosz called "one of my biggest influences," for a wailing duet on another Jarosz original. For an encore, Hargreaves, Grisman and Jarosz let loose some tasty blues licks on Tom Waits' "Come Up to My House."

Jarosz has something bigger in mind than being the next bluegrass sweetheart. She has the talent and poise to be something like a future Shawn Colvin.

Wintergrass goes chic

Each time I have been to Wintergrass, I always think I'll make a visit to the famous Tacoma Museum of Glass, but each year the music schedule is so intense that I never seem to make it. This year it seems that the museum has moved in with the festival, with the newly renovated festival hotel, renamed The Murano, features beautiful glass art throughout the hotel, much of it truly stunning.

You might wonder how all that high design fits with the flavor of a bluegrass festival that has inhabited this space for all of its dozen years of operation. This answer is pretty well. There are lots of changes—lobby and lounge spaces rearranged, some no-jam zones, and boutique hotel flourishes throughout.

But the jammers seem to be finding new favorite places to set up, including a lounge area with fireplace to one side of the lobby that is a beautiful cozy nook. Even though parts of the renovation are still in progress, everything looks to be working smoothly.

One issue with the old hotel was not easy to fix, and the three elevators are again overwhelmed with traffic. Anyone trying to make it to suites on the upper floors may wait several minutes for an elevator and then make a dozen or more stops on the way up.

Jamming at Joe Val

Our friend Lisa G, who blogs at Festive Living, filed a report and photo gallery from last weekend's Joe Val Bluegrass Festival in Framingham MA.

Here's a great excerpt about the elevator jams at the festival. Go here for the full report and here for the images.

When one thinks of elevator music, it usually brings to mind some bland, boring background music meant to relax, but invariably having the opposite effect (at least to me). But at the festival this past weekend in Framingham, MA , the term "elevator music" took on a whole new meaning.

As you ride the elevator between floors, you can hear the sounds of banjos and mandolins getting closer and closer and then surprise! The doors slide open to a pickin' party. Don't care for that rendition of "Old Home Place"? Step back in, go up or down a floor and find another group playing "Foggy Mountain Breakdown".

This is what turns a 3-day concert into a real bluegrass festival, since bluegrass is a type of music where a high percentage of the audience are musicians themselves. You can just travel between floors listening to or taking part in endless jams all weekend.