Thousands of people in an ultimately sold out Yarmonygrass, (at Copper Mountain, CO in August) endured biblically bad weather - including sleet, hail, freezing rain, cold rain, thunder and lighting while it snowed. Thousands of people at the Mulberry Mountain Festival (in September) in Arkansas were struck by hurricane winds in excess of 80 m.p.h. Thousands of people in Winfield, Kansas were evacuated from the flooding caused by Hurricane Ike.
But, in the end, most everyone got what they came for, paid for, endured.
All the major jam/grass festivals, in spite of sometimes very adverse weather conditions, reported record attendance. This summer's festivarians got an incredible line up of the stars and rising stars of that hard-to-define, psychedelic musical genre known as jamgrass\nugrass. They got the full spectrum of the music from the traditional acoustic to the fusion/rave side.
And they got amazing, noteable, memorable parties.
"This music, these music festivals are about people running from the bubble-gum, running from the waste land of mainstream pop music, and running to music and musical events that have authenticity," says Eric Peter Abramson, the maker of the documentary 'Years in Your Ears', about 'Left Over Salmon', and the rise of the summer musical festival as we know them in Colorado.
"It's about music that has an authenticity of musical idiom, of lyric, of sentiment, of experience narrated," said Abramson. "It's about musical events in which people find a sense of community around and in this music," he said.
"Everyone, all the musicians that play music in these festivals have started, they all have a background in something that can be regarded as a kind of acoustic, traditional blue grass. They're all graduates of some blue grass project," said jam/grass legend Peter Rowan, who played with Bill Monroe, as well as Jerry Garcia.
At a press conference on the final day of Yarmonygrass, Rowan attempted to describe what is the shared components, the commonalities of the music that is played at jam/grass festivals.
"Music, by its very nature, can't stand still. It can't stand still for individual musicians, can't stand still for musicians collectively. Why should it? Who would want it to stand still, stagnate? he asked.
"All good musicians, all real music lovers they hope to see musicians surpass themselves, transcend themselves. That's what jamming means. It's about musicians' ability and willingness to go where the music and the moments takes them. It's about the audience letting the musicians go there.
"It is a leap into the wild blue yonder to go up on stage with a bunch of musicians unrehearsed, one could say unprepared but knowing that something will build in the jam, that everyone will have something important to give. "Jam music is an open, free, and yet co-operative, integrative music which goes towards a new paradigm of music, a new paradigm of consciousness
"I have never been disappointed by what results from the jam," Rowan said.
"And yet blue grass remains somewhere in all the music that gets played at these festivals. Its the place you turn to, come back to, the common language we all share," he said.
"I strongly believe our music is an effective and proper soundtrack for the progressive, and environmental movement - the green movement, said Aaron Redner, the fiddler for 'Hot Buttered Rum' which tours in a biodiesel fueled bus.
"My personal goal with music is to provide a bridge between classical music and Americana music," said Radner, a classically trained violinist.
"Hot Buttered Rum' might jump from swing jazz to old-school fiddle, to straight-ahead rock," he said.
"These festivals provide an opportunity, a place to see where everyone is going in the music, said Rowan.
"Good people, good music, good times. "And that's why people will come to these festivals every year," he said.
[read blog-style -- first entry at bottom of page]