#wintergrass

Flying to Wintergrass felt like a reprise of my February 2020 trip to the Ground Up festival in Miami. Flying into an unknown, vaguely fearful and dark future. Once there, future be damned, Wintergrass was its own delightful little world in a hotel lobby. Below are a few highlights, but certainly not all of them!

I witnessed a two-hour vintage instrument showcase, with Mike Marshall, Michael Daves, Jacob Jolliff and Avril Smith playing ensemble. For their opening song, they played four guitars that were made in the 1800s. They switched instruments for each song, getting newer ones each time. The last song featured guitars and mandolins from the 1950s.

Per Wintergrass tradition, there was jamming in the lobbies and stairway landings and elevator vestibules. There were also several events for kids, culminating in a youth orchestra concert on the last day.

I found myself sitting on the floor at the "What she wrote," women songwriter workshop, and got this perspective.

I had not seen my long-time friend Joe Weed since before the pandemic. Here he is with his daughter Katie. Both of them are amazing musicians. They played a Joe Weed original twin-fiddle composition in the hallway that could have been on stage. (Afterwards I had to walk down the hall looking for my socks.) Joe's musical passions are expressed in lower-key ways - music history documentaries, audio engineering, etc. but he still practices violin often enough to keep sharp.

Twin fiddles again. The great Darol Anger and the great Bruce Molsky. Genius set to music.

I don't think I'll ever again consider attending a bluegrass festival that doesn't have a choro band. In fact, choro has been a regular feature of Wintergrass for well over a decade. Here's the most recent incarnation of Mike Marshall's band Choro Famoso. That's Brian Rice on pandeiro, the most amazingly incredible Douglas Lora on 7-string guitar, special guest (and long-time resident of the Pacific Northwest) Jovino Santos Neto on melodica, Mike on mando, and Andy Connell on clarinet.

There's an active choro scene in the Seattle area with a monthly roda. About 50 gringo choroẽs came out to play with the Choro Famoso band members. Everybody knew everybody. It was generous and high-spirited. The music hit all the right notes.

On Saturday night there was a "secret concert," but the word got out, and the room was packed for THE DUO, Mike Marshall and Darol Anger. They've been playing as The Duo - off and on - for maybe 40 years. The set was built around folk and bluegrass standards, for example, a version of Elizabeth Cotten's Freight Train, played uniquely, with evocative technique I could not begin to describe, but so wonderful it brought tears to my eyes. One more thing I realized in this set - my ears have spent twenty years listening to Darol's fiddle magic and I feel only now that I am learning enough to begin to appreciate his musical mind.

The last Wintergrass set I saw was Trey Hensley and Rob Ickes.