Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2011 – Day 3

Decided to park it down on the Banjo Stage— First I saw the last of Dry Branch Fire Squad, which was a very satisfying bluegrass group. Then Laurie Lewis came on, a faily traditional bluegrass group. They performed one of her earlier recording efforts, "American Chestnet", and later they even did some a cappella vocals on one tune.

I really wanted to see Bela Fleck at 1:20 in the afternoon, with Zakir Hussein on Tabla(son of the tabla player who came over from India with Ravi Shankar in the sixties; AND who played on my brother's composition "Lakshmi Rocks Me" from Ancient Future's "World Without Walls". Bela Fleck made his name as a world-class jazz banjo player, and these days is not even bothering to pay attention to accepted genres or commercial trends. The group was great: they played a gentle set of bluegrass, jazz and indian ragas, which went over very well in the context of this outdoor festival. Bela Fleck is accomplished to the point that he no longer needs to impress his audience– and yet he does so anyway.

His sound was reminiscent of Shakti (with Lakshmi Shankar on five-string violin, Zakir Hussein and John McGloughlin) and Oregon (Ralph Towner, who performed at Woodstock, on acoustic twelve-string guitar, Paul McCandless on Oboe, Colin Walcott on Tabla, Glen Moore on stand-up bass.) The bass player for Fleck played both stand-up bass parts, and did "virtual" viola & violin parts, using a bow on the top two strings. Fleck also brought on a bamboo flute player to round out the effect. The overall feel of his set was very fitting for the setting.

I wasn't planning on seeing the Blind Boys of Alabama, but I got a good seat and didn't figure to find another such seat if I went wandering between stages. The Blind Boys were a very satisfying gospel group. They began with the standard "People Get Ready", and sang it about as well as I've ever heard it. They followed that with "Spirit in the Sky" (a song I'm not crazy about). They had a good lead guitar player who played a Fender Stratocaster much in the style of the lead player from Isley Brothers. They performed "House of the Rising Sun", and ended with the gospel standard "I Saw the Light."

After that, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys took the stage, playing mostly traditional bluegrass with hints of gospel. They played an old traditional song "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms" (a bluegrass favorite I've enjoyed since I was a teenager).

Finally, Emmylou Harris came on to close out the festival, as she does most years (except when Willie Nelson was here). She began with Gillian Welch's "I am an orphan," which I've heard Emmylou perform twice, and have never heard Gillian Welch perform. She sang a couple of songs about pets (which I wasn't overly thrilled about), then she sang one song a cappella. It was an enormous crowd, so I began to extricate myself from the crowd. She finished her set with yet another rendition of "Pancho & Lefty", and then brought Warren Hellman and Patty Griffin out to sing a Carter Family tune.