The Post-Boomer Bluegrass Boom, Part 1
For what seems like a long time, every year at The Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Festival one friend would say, “Where are all the younger people?”
He, like everyone else sitting around drinking coffee in our folding chairs, was a Baby Boomer. And, with the exception of the young families who came to hear the music and bring their children to enjoy the beautiful Columbia Gorge, it was Boomers as far as you could see.
Well, my friend’s question has been answered.
They’ve all shown up. And a lot of them are playing very traditional bluegrass music.
You need look no farther than the ten entrants in the OBA-sponsored band competition held earlier this year in Shaniko. There were few boomers to be heard among the several dozen super-talented performers.
Last summer I went to a show at Threshold Brewery to find myself in a packed house of bluegrass fans. Many of them were also performing in other bands. And until recently, I had never met more than a couple of them. That’s when I realized there was new life in old bluegrass. Hurray.
These folks weren’t people we’d been seeing at bluegrass shows and jams. They weren’t being mentored by the old guard. They just seemed to emerge, fully immersed in pre-70s bluegrass, singing songs we all know – and doing a great job.
So I wondered where they all came from and how this group of interesting and accomplished people came together to carry on the tradition.
In the next few months, I’ll be writing interviews with some of these terrific people.
Up soon, a conversation with Hannah Dondy-Kaplan and Linda Scherba, banjo player and mandolinist in Sweet Fern.