When our daughter, Jessica, invited us to accompany her family to what she described as a “terrific bluegrass festival” not far from her home in Portland, Maine, I admit that I had second thoughts. I had grown up in Nashville where I been exposed to a lot of music including bluegrass, old timey and, of course, country music, but had not been a big fan. My favorite music was what then was called rhythm and blues—Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, the Drifters and the like. And Embry and I had attended several bluegrass and old timey music festivals when we were living in Chapel Hill in the early 1970s. I found that with bluegrass a little goes a long way since there is not a whole lot of wiggle room if you are aiming for the authentic sound of Bill Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs. Three days of this might be a little much. Plus, there was the issue of camping since the festival was about an hour’s drive northwest of Portland, Maine, and most attendees camped. Sadly, for most people in our mid 80s or older, sleeping on the ground in a tent is above our paygrade.
Jes persuaded us when she volunteered to reserve an RV for us to rent. And besides, the main attraction for us was spending the long weekend with her family and our son Andrew’s family, driving up from a New Jersey suburb of New York City, which included their spouses and all four grandchildren, all except one now in college. How could we say no?
So off we went on a Thursday afternoon, driving through an extraordinarily beautiful countryside under Carolina-blue skies, temperatures in the low 80s, low humidity and no billboards. Hey, if Maine does not allow billboards on country roads, why can’t all states do it too? The hour-long ride up to the festival was almost worth all the effort in flying up to Maine, having our first flight canceled earlier in the week and eventually arriving around midnight on a later flight.
As we turned into the main entrance to the festival located on the site of the Ossipee County Fairgrounds, we were behind a couple of RVs and soon greeted warmly by a welcoming committee where we got wrist bands and headed to the site that Peter and Jessica had claimed for our group of fourteen campers a few days before. Since all tent sites were first-come-first served, the only way to be sure to get a good one required getting there very early and staking out your campsite– as in several days ahead of the event. They chose a spot across from the reserved site for our RV. Plus, they wanted to be near the site of close friends from Portland. Someone had alerted us that arriving early to witness “The Great Hippie Land Grab” was half the fun. The massive RV that Jessica had reserved for us arrived almost at the same time—along with what seemed like an endless train of RVs of all shapes and sizes.
Let the fun begin! But what to expect? Would we be subjected to three monotonous days of Bill Monroe’s traditional bluegrass? Would the good weather hold? Would the camping work out?
In a word, I was blown away. The festival was not at all what I had expected. First, there was very little if any traditional bluegrass music. I attended around ten music sessions scattered over two and a half days and did not hear anything that sounded like traditional bluegrass music. An entire fresh music genre has emerged that is based onbluegrass–sometimes called “newgrass” — but much more versatile. Most of the tunes and songs were original, composed and written by the performers. What all the groups had in common in the sessions that I attended was that the same musical instruments used for traditional bluegrass were used here—one or two guitars, a standup base, a fiddle, banjo and mandolin. But that was about it. I could not begin to describe it accurately, but from my perspective the music was all good, all enjoyable and some of it spectacular.
The program that we received when we entered listed about 50 performing groups doing 45-minute sessions that happened over the two and a half days in four venues including the mainstage where the afternoon and evening sessions happened and which could accommodate over 2,000 people, all of whom brought their own chairs and some of whom stood in front of the stage dancing and jumping to the music, not so great for people like us sitting on the second row but indeed a spectacle. My favorite group were the Brothers Comatose but there were others with names like “the Traveling Wildfires,” “Slap Dragon,” “Red Skies,” “Tricky Britches,” and “The Faux Paws.” And they came from all over, several from San Francisco and New England, various parts of Appalachia, some from the South but also from Sweden, Norway, The Czech Republic and Mexico. And the performers were mostly young, 25-40 somethings, engaging, energetic and excellent musicians with almost as many women as men performing.
And what is about the Millennials generation that encourages so many men to have beards and women to have tattoos?
But as great as the music was, that was just the backdrop for what to an outsider like me seemed like a love feast. Old friends were embracing, small children riding on the backs of their parents, older kids riding bikes, teenagers chilling out in small groups, old folks sitting in rocking chairs around campfires. And the music was not confined to the formal venues. Jam sessions were happening everywhere. Maybe two or three people would pull out guitars and a fiddle at their campsite, and within minutes the group would begin to expand to include someone with a banjo or mandolin or even a standup base. I was told that there is an etiquette that before entering a jam session, someone wandering in with an instrument needed a nod of approval before playing. I was also told that about a quarter of the 2,000 or so campers never attended any of the formal music of Ossipee spending all their time in jam sessions.
And if music was not your thing, there was always the Ossipee River where you could drift downstream in your large innertube where at the end you would be met by, yet another band comprised of friends of Jes and Peter. Throughout the week there was an endless march of people dragging enormous innertubes headed to the river or coming back.
And perhaps best of all there was no talk about politics, no Trump or MAGA bumper stickers, no political signs of any type. What a relief from our lives outside of Ossipee where we are bombarded by politics and the sad state of our democracy! At one point it occurred to me that if there is a heaven or an afterlife, this is what I would want it to be like– moving from one jam session to another, listening to terrific music, hanging out with close friends and family, embracing loved ones, sitting around campfires and surrounded by music which is hopeful, upbeat and affirming.
If only. If only….