Moving a bluegrass festival

It might not seem like such a big deal. Music events come and go. If you buy a ticket, you go. When it’s over, you leave. You probably take with you some good memories. You remember the music. You remember the atmosphere. You remember the people. You remember the place.

What you might not give much thought to are the scores of people, the equipment, the planning and more that make it all happen. It’s almost as if it appears by magic. Not so, of course.

For more than 30 years, there had been a festival on a hillside on the Rothvoss Farm, in Ancramdale, N.Y., a small hamlet where New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts meet. What started as the Berkshire Mountain Bluegrass Festival, later became known as Winterhawk and finally, the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival. Grey Fox has become one of the premier bluegrass festivals in the Northeast, attracting top-name acts from all over the country.

Here is a video produced after 2007’s festival.

I have been attending the festival since 1988. It is not just a vacation to me, and I know others feel the same. For me, the festival became my second home. It has been an event I plan around every year.

But several months ago, the farm was sold, leaving a festival and a family of attendees — some 4,000 campers — without a home. A careful search ensued, and in February the organizers finally found a new home for the festival (Read announcement).

I had the privilege to return to Grey Fox’s former home last weekend as its site crew went about the daunting business of breaking down what was on the site and moving material to the festival’s new digs, at Walsh Farm, in Oak Hill, N.Y. The new site is about three hours from my home in southeastern Massachusetts.

I watched and helped as workers ripped pieces off the rickety wooden stage that had seen the likes of Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, along with bluegrass luminaries too numerous to list. When I arrived, the back of the stage already had been removed. A set list from Nickel Creek still was taped to the backstage wall. It was in that same area that banjo legend Earl Scruggs had made a rapid retreat to escape a downpour several years ago. To the surprise of the soaking audience, he performed backstage with his band, and the festival plopped down a microphone so all could hear.

But last Saturday, the site crew pulled apart the stage. Eventually it was demolished and removed. The new stage will contain remnants of the old, but it will never be the same. Nonetheless, the show goes on. Workers packed the dance stage onto a flatbed piece by piece. Tons of material wound its way through New York’s back roads and ended up at Walsh Farm. The site is substantially larger than the old and mostly flat. But it’s hard to picture it all just yet.

The festival may have moved, but traditions live on. Grey Fox, being held this year July 17-20, has one of its most star-studded line-ups ever. And while organizers still try to figure out where to place the new main stage, the dance stage, the children’s tent, the grass roots tent, dozens of vendors and sponsors and thousands of campers, I’m confident it will all come together. It always has. As long as the spirit is alive, it always will.

Here is some video of the festival move on the day I was there:

~ by folkmaster on May 8, 2008.