Wernick fires back

After the recent exchange of opinions between musician Pete Wernick and festival impressario Craig Ferguson in this blog and an Internet radio station, I was looking forward to hooking up with Wernick at Grey Fox, where he performed on the main stage this afternoon with his jam-camp students.

I was ready with my tape recorder to do an interview, but it turned out that Pete was way ahead of me, having spent much of the previous night composing a written response to Ferguson's reply, which was published in Festival Preview yesterday, I will publish the complete text of Wernick's latest message in the next post.

Instead of an interview, we chatted over vegie burritos in the hospitality tent, joined also by Ken Irwin, the president of Rounder Records. The gist of it is that Wernick doesn't want to let the matter drop. Words mean something and Telluride isn't bluegrass. He recognizes that he may not be endearing himself to Planet Bluegrass, but he feels the matter is important enough to press the issue.

Tim and Mollie O'Brien are starting on the main stage. There was just a stunning sunset. I'm running out of power on the computer. Later.