As I get older, my desire to attend crowded concerts has diminished to basically nil.
Which is odd, since my youth was spent attending hundreds of concerts, and even attending the big-name, week-or-weekend-long music festivals (before they were cool, mind you).
Lately, the leisurely speed of the Darlington Bluegrass Festival is the exact gear I want my concerts to hit: a folding chair, a stocked cooler, a blanket to lay on in the grass as a change-up, and zero jostle for space, as people spread out. Umbrellas for shade? No problem.
About an hour and a half outside Seattle, Darlington refers to itself as the “Bluegrass Capitol of the Northwest” but is primarily a logging town— the sawmill that sits just outside the strip one might call ‘town’ is the biggest employer in the area by a long shot, and most of the people you’ll meet at the bars and restaurants work there— or work in the industry of logging— in some capacity.
The Bluegrass Festival has been going for darn near 50 or so years (46 to be exact), and it’s a tradition the locals are proud of— several of the acts announce their legacy on the stage, from boasting about previous appearances to name-dropping (in that cute, humble way) the acts who came before them and helped create their own path toward success. The sense of tradition was strong, as even the founders of the festival (Bertha and Brenda) were reserved ‘seats’ near historic photos of the festival.
The festival feels like it springs from a tight-knit community, which it definitively does, as the greetings from one person to another were always more familiar than not. This is especially evident if one camps in the campground just STEPS from the mainstage, though luckily the grounds are made quiet by a canopy of trees that helps to insulate the campground from the noise emitting from the speakers elsewhere.
As we found a spot at the back of the campground, it was mostly quiet– and Mac enjoyed snoozing under the trees and under the canopy of the van.
The campground contains a particular sort of alchemy, as most of the campers also play an instrument handily— and will often wander the campsites with their instrument case, ready to observe other ‘Pickers’ who like to hang out around a campfire and play music together.
These are not organized groups, or bands, playing from sheet music— these are just individuals who love to play, and love getting a chance to improvise together. Yep. Improvise— ‘Pickers’— ostensibly named for the guitar picks they use to play banjos and guitars of all kinds— are looking to create music in the way of jazz acts, working together to create the music in the moment, and not before.
There are apparently some really informal but clear guardrails for joining a group of ‘Pickers’— which I don’t know the extent of, and won’t pretend to understand. But if one observes these unwritten rules of engagement, they might be accepted into the group with a little nod or beckon. Only then will they remove their instrument from the case and sit.
While I can’t speculate as to the numbers of people who attend, it looked like several thousand— which isn’t all that bad for a smaller Washington town. And because acts drive from the reaches of Georgia, Tennessee, and so on— the festival has a surprisingly national feel. Since so many bluegrass acts originate in the Southeast of the U.S., that’s where many hail from.
Thus, attending the Bluegrass festival never felt like seeing a regional assemblage of acts— rather, I felt lucky to see some stunningly-talented national acts take the stage.
You won’t find a ton of young people at this festival— not unless you count the families with young kids— it’s not ‘cool’ to be there, and there definitely is not a mosh pit of any kind. In fact, people don’t even stand much at all— they sit waaaaayyy back, bringing a relaxed energy that is enough to make you wonder if you’ve been ‘concerting’ the wrong way your whole life.
And I’d be omitting an obvious if I didn’t mention that most bluegrass players and fans tend toward older age— there were lots of gray hairs poking out of sunhats, visors, and cowboy hats— both onstage and off. This made me wonder if bluegrass will have an influx of younger musicians, the way country music inevitably does, every decade or so— or if there’s more danger that bluegrass might be fading from the popular view enough to be at-risk as a skillset and a genre of music.
I certainly hope not, as the talent I witnessed was moving. Often, the eldest patrons were the most talented— playing multiple instruments with the vigor of teenagers, despite advanced age. One gentleman in his 70s even took turns playing each of the instruments of his assembled band— darting around stage to pick up new instruments, seamlessly taking them up and blending with the others with a clear mastery.
Perhaps the best part about the festival grounds is the way that Whitehorse Mountain— a thundering hulk of a mountain— overlooks the dip of the amphitheater, as well as the town. This makes the view spectacular. This glaciated mountain is quite tall— 6,841 feet— but like many of Washington State’s mountains, is losing its glaciers gradually.
People in town, especially longtime residents, were clear in conveying that Whitehorse Mountain’s glacier used to take up a huge part of the mountain face back in the day— so large, it never faced a seasonal melt that decimated it. But, in recent years, locals and geologists have estimated that the glacier may become seasonal, where it was once a constant.
While the Darlington Bluegrass Festival hadn’t changed much in almost 50 years, the mountain clearly had— showing that nothing remains completely constant.
My previous musings about the staying power of bluegrass as the age of the players advances— returned as I thought about the mountain glacier as a metaphor for the genre itself.
I certainly hope that the festival— and the mountain— last much longer than it might appear they are poised to.
And of course, I couldn’t make a post about the bluegrass festival without including some video for you to get a vibe for the music– here’s a very short video from the mainstage, and one of the best bands, to round up this post:
Posted by Sun
