I ran accross thie great article about the Darrington bluegrass festival -and after visiting the jam a few weeks ago I thought I'd share a piece of it ...
READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE Travel Washington: Darrington’s bluegrass thrives in Evergreen State --Written On: March/April 2008 -- Written By: Richard S. Davis
...Roy Morgan, a retired logger and one of [Darrinton Bluegrass] Festival's founders, came to Darrington in 1958 at 19. “I knew some people here, and the country’s about the same in western North Carolina as it is here,” he said.Their cultural and musical traditions accompanied them, and they wrote home to friends and relatives they’d left behind. “It’s an adaptable and transportable culture,” said Philyaw. “But it also holds onto things.”
Ernest Queen came to Sedro Woolley from Sylva, N.C. in 1955, having heard from others who’d made the move that he could double his paycheck in Washington. Now an active 75, Queen still plays rhythm guitar and sings with his band, Queens Bluegrass, which has performed at the Darrington festival about a dozen times. With a grandfather who played banjo at Carolina barn dances, he grew up with mountain music.
Dan Hays, the executive director of the Nashville-based International Bluegrass Music Association, calls bluegrass a “music born out of migration.” The people who left the mountains knew well the Scots-Irish fiddle tunes, southern blues, and gospel music from which Bill Monroe created the distinctive bluegrass sound in the late 1940s. The sounds of Appalachia found sympathetic echoes in the evergreen forests that welcomed the transplanted Tarheels.
Overgrown jam session
“We just started having jam sessions over at Grover’s,” says Morgan, a banjo player. Grover is
Grover Jones, who owns a trailer park in Darrington where Roy and Diana live. Soon the sessions were drawing folks from Bellingham to Seattle, 80 miles to the southwest. Jones’s wife, Earnestine, says there were times when they had 53 people making music at the house. After a while, Morgan says, “we overrun Grover’s house and there were people all over the trailer park.” The Joneses came from the same North Carolina community as Ernest Queen: Grover at 9 in 1938 and Earnestine in 1947 at 15.
Earnestine also grew up with music, mostly Southern gospel. “My first memories were of music with my family [and] of people coming to my house and singing,” she says. “I’ve been singing all my life.” The Saturday night sessions moved to the schoolhouse, finally ending up at the community center for a jam and Tarheel dinner on the second Sunday of the month.
Bluegrass capitol of the Northwest
By this time, Darrington had established itself as the bluegrass capital of the Northwest, as proclaimed on a sign that used to stand at the city limits. Prominent performers would often play at small town gatherings.
Bill Monroe himself once showed up to play a freebie at one of the regular Darrington sessions. Although he wasn’t paid for the gig, Monroe didn’t leave empty-handed. Morgan’s band, the White Horse Mountaineers had written an instrumental tune they called White Horse Breakdown.” “I’m sure we played it the day he was up here,” Morgan says. “It must have hit him a little bit, because he put it on record and it was pretty close to what we were doing.” He still laughs about his contribution to the Monroe repertoire.
As the gatherings grew, so did the aspirations. In 1976 the Darrington Bluegrass and Country Music Maker Association put on its first festival at the rodeo grounds outside of town.
“We decided to try to have a festival,” Roy Morgan said. “And so we did.” Another of the festival’s founders,
Bertha Stations Whiteside, said, “We did it for the enjoyment of the music.” Her band, The Combinations, continues to perform regularly at Darrington and other Northwest venues.
First festival
The first festival featured local bands, many of the folks who played in the weekly sessions. With word-of-mouth publicity and a few flyers the event drew only about 150 people. But like the jam sessions, the festival flourished. When the state patrol began complaining about the cars parked on both sides of the highway, it was time to move.By then, the group had raised some cash. From the beginning, they’d split ticket sales with the bands. By 1984, they were able to buy 40 acres near Darrington for $90,000. After a lot of hard work, all by volunteers, they created a spectacular amphitheater with a stage facing towering White Horse Mountain. Festival attendance continued to grow. In the mid-1990s, revenues had reached the point where it became possible to bring in nationally recognized artists.
Diana Morgan, Roy’s wife, handles bookings for the festival. She’s been astonishingly successful in bringing some of bluegrass music’s top performers to Darrington, including Rhonda Vincent, Larry Sparks, Cherryholmes, IIIrd Tyme Out, and Doyle Lawson. Morgan says most of them comment on the unparalleled beauty of the venue. To see just how alive bluegrass is in Washington, come to Darrington this summer. The tradition lives.
Sidebar: Bluegrass Festivals in Washington
- March 28-30 Long Beach Bluegrass Festival, Chautauqua Lodge, Long Beach
- March 29 Pend Oreille Valley Bluegrass Festival Fund Raiser Concert, Newport High School, Newport
- April 4-6 Shelton Old-Time Fiddlers’ Fest, Shelton High School Auditorium
- May 2-4Moses Lake Bluegrass Camp ‘n Jam, Grant County Fairgrounds, Moses Lake
- May 9-11 4th Annual Bluegrass from the Forest Festival, Shelton
- June 6-9 Winlock Pickersfest, Winolequa Park, Winlock
- June 13-15 Sacajawea Bluegrass Festival/Dutch Oven Rendezvous, Sacajawea State Park, Pasco
- June 20-22 Wenatchee River Bluegrass Festival, Chelan County Expo Center, Cashmere
- June 20-22 Second Annual Amboy Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival, Amboy
- July 4-6 Red, White & Bluegrass Family Pickin’ Party, Stevens County Fair & Expo Center, Colville
- July 18-20 Darrington Bluegrass Festival, Darrington Bluegrass Music Park, Darrington
- July 25-27 Adventure Bluegrass, Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Festival, Stevenson
