OCT 10, 2024 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | By Anabel Shenk
I sat down on the first of two flights to Raleigh, N.C., and the woman sitting to my left, after watching me struggle to fit my guitar in the overhead bin asked me where I was off to. I told her “North Carolina for a bluegrass festival,” which prompted the immediate question about my concern for the hurricane. I asked her if I should be. “Oh girl … it’s hitting the Carolinas the worst. I’m from the Virgin Islands, so I know hurricanes.” By now, we know the catastrophic results of Hurricane Helene, a tropical cyclone that generated severe damage and destruction in the Southeastern United States. With over 220 deaths and more unaccounted for, as well as unimaginable destruction to land and infrastructure, it was the deadliest hurricane in the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Much later that evening we landed in Raleigh and the brewing storm sat thick in the air, making our walk to the taxi lane feel like a hike through a hot, sticky ocean. I, along with four other members of the Colorado College bluegrass ensemble as well as our director, Keith Reed, crammed all of our limbs and all our instruments into an Uber and drove into town.
Formed in 1985, the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) founded its headquarters in Owensboro, Ky. and in 1987, established the World of Bluegrass which is a combination of concerts, a trade show and awards ceremonies. The IBMA World of Bluegrass happened annually in Owensboro before moving to Louisville in 1997, then to Nashville in 2005, and to Raleigh in 2013, where it still happens today and where the Colorado College Bluegrass Ensemble has the privilege of participating each year. In 1991, IBMA started the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in the IBMA museum which inducts two new members every year. The three initial inductees were Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, the list now includes people like Tony Rice, the Carter Family, Allison Krauss and more.
The hottest and largest event of the weekend — which we caught the second half of — was the rising star Sierra Ferrell entertaining a 6,000-person outdoor amphitheater. Ferrell, who began her career as a busker, hitchhiker, and independent musician, was discovered by a producer famous for collaborating with Allison Krauss and Dolly Parton. Since 2019 she has been soaring, gaining recognition, playing the biggest festivals like Telluride Bluegrass and IBMA, as well as consistently filling up huge venues across the globe on tour. Her show was as theatrical as it was musically astonishing. Her vocals are tender and vivid and her presence on stage and in space is truly distinctive. The subtlety and emotion in her songs is oddly but enjoyably accompanied by feathers sticking up multiple feet above her head and a stark, compelling expression. Her whimsiness was offset by a shade of darkness. After her encore song she twirled off stage, bouncing and giddy.
Perhaps the best thing about any bluegrass festival, besides catching magical moments on stage as an audience member, is the late-night jamming with other festival-goers which can last until five or six a.m. Many festivals happen during the summer and the jamming occurs while scattered around a campground, each one protected by a canopy or a tarp strung up between trees. At IBMA, all the jams happen in the large Marriot hotel downtown. The lobby, the hallways and the insides of people’s rooms are filled with circles of players. One can walk around for hours and enter and exit different small pocket universes of music every few seconds.
So, on Friday night, I, along with the rest of the CC ensemble, wandered into someone’s hotel room close to 12:30 in the morning, sat down and were immediately serenaded by “Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra,” a Norwegian bluegrass band from Oslo. While performing songs widely recognized by the bluegrass community, they put their own twist on it with an accordion player and choir-style vocals as most of the band members came together in group harmony. A little while later, we migrated to the lobby and were drawn into a side room where a man was playing a kora, a West African string instrument, alongside a fiddler. I sat there, cast into a meditative, dream-like state until it was time to get some fresh air.
Something beautiful about IBMA is that there are stages set up in the streets, open to the public. The following evening, we saw a new, up-and-coming group from the Bay Area, “Crying Uncle” play a small street stage. All coming out of the California bluegrass scene, these five young instrumentalists (the youngest not even 18) really leave an audience dumbfounded, expertly melding together sounds of bluegrass, jazz and folk. Highly influenced by David Grisman and Dawg music, they were able to play at Grisman’s induction to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame last year in 2023. The night was cool, but still muggy, moisture lingering, never quite motivated to move.
The sounds never cease, one performance fades into another, you walk away from one jam, one song, one moment and start hearing the hums of another before you’ve lost the first. Humbled, thrilled and exhausted, the five of us packed up and headed back to Colorado.