Category: Del McCoury


Festival Coverfolk: Grey Fox, July 17-20 (Bluegrass covers of Tom Petty, John Mayer, Richard Thompson, Bob Dylan (x2), and more!)

June 25th, 2008 — 09:42 am

Walsh Farm: the gorgeous new site of Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival

After over thirty years on the same site, for most regular festivalgoers, the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival experience has become intertwined with the landscape of the farm which hosted it, from the steep hill which formed a natural mainstage amphitheater to the even steeper hill which separated the entrance and parking areas from the main camping and festival site. So when the organizers of Grey Fox announced at this winter’s Joe Val Festival that the farm had been sold, and that they would be moving the festival almost forty minutes north to Oak Hill, NY, there was some serious buzz in the bluegrass community.

It happens: farms fail; festivals move on. And certainly, switching sites changes things around a bit for any music festival. Figuring out where everything goes in a new and unfamiliar space can be disorienting. But making changes is also a great opportunity to revisit and re-establish the very values which do not change, the ones that bring us together each year. When Falcon Ridge Folk Festival moved from one farm to another three summers ago, for example, watching returning regular festivalgoers try to figure out where their “usual” camping spot was on a totally different field made for a fascinating sociological case study. But it was reassuring to see how gentle and cheerful everyone was about the whole process. Once we all settled in, we found our old friends, and had made some new ones, to boot. And by the time the music started, the place felt just like home.

Which is to say: though landscape and terrain certainly frame the experience of any outdoor festival, in my experience, it is the community and the music which make or break a music festival. And given that, Grey Fox fans have nothing to worry about. Having attended Grey Fox for several years, I can attest to both its strong and welcoming sense of community, and its well-deserved reputation as the best bluegrass festival in the Northeast, thanks to wonderful craft and food vendors, impeccable sound production, tight sets and staging, and a performance schedule chock full of artists that will knock your socks off.

This year’s lineup, in fact, is one of the best I have seen, a veritable “who’s who” of the very best artists in the surprisingly diverse spectrum of sound that is today’s bluegrass. The list includes plenty of big names (see below), and many bluegrass community favorites, like International Bluegrass Music Association multiple award winners Missy Raines (bass), and Michael Cleveland (fiddle), both of whom impressed the hell out of me at Joe Valover the past few years. And the Grey Fox organizers have a good eye for new talent; it’s a slow year if I only come away with a couple of new favorite and previously-unheard acts by the end of the festival’s four day run.

There’s banjo master Bill Keith, who has been a mainstay of the Northeast bluegrass scene longer than most folks knew there even was a Northeast bluegrass scene. All-female old-timey bluegrass group Uncle Earl do a great afternoon set every year; if you haven’t heard them, know that they are often cited next to new folk artists (and Cover Lay Down favorites) Crooked Still and Sam Amidon as part of a rising generation of great neo-traditionalists. You’ll find plenty of current chartbusters, such as the Nashville-based Dailey and Vincent Band, who lean towards countrygrass. And those are just the artists who I didn’t have room for in today’s download extravaganza.

Today, then, a few choice covers from just a few more of the great acts scheduled to play at the new, more gently sloping home of Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, July 17-20. Notably, this is just the tip of the iceberg; this year’s roster is so good, it was hard to hold myself to a reasonable-sized list. But like the above survey, these artists comprise a representative sample of the “best of the fest” in more ways than one, ranging from traditional bluegrass groups to artists pushing the boundaries between jazz, appalachian folk, and newgrass, and from up-and-coming artists to still-vibrant mainstays of the bluegrass scene. Enjoy, and I’ll see you in Oak Hill.

And don’t miss these other Grey Fox 2008 attendees which I’ve previously featured on Cover Lay Down:

Tempted? For a full list of performers coming to this year’s festival, directions to the new site, and tickets galore, head on over to the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival website. I’ll see you up on the hill at the new, gently sloping site July 17-20.

1,128 comments » | Abigail Washburn, David Grisman, Del McCoury, Gibson Brothers, Hot Rize, Infamous Stringdusters, Sam Bush, Sparrow Quartet, Tim O'Brien

Single Song Sunday: Rain and Snow (On Traditional Folksongs as Tabula Rosa) Plus 3 bonus Grateful Dead rainsongs

December 16th, 2007 — 03:01 am


Whether stripped-down so as not to overwhelm the authenticity of the song and singer, or jazzed up to resonate with modern musical sensibilities, it is the passage of familiar song, motif, and situation between audience and performer which makes the “folk” in folk music. Songs about trains are ultimately songs about longing; songs about the road resonate with those who wander and those who long for a change, though in different ways. Such songs play broadly to universal themes, the better to leave room for such connection. In collapsing the participant/observer gap, the songs have connected folk artists and folk audiences for a century or more.

We might say, then, that traditional songs like Rain and Snow (also called Cold Rain and Snow in some collections) are both heart and origin of folk music. Problematically, however, these same qualities which make tradfolk accessible can make writing about traditional songs an exercise in futility.

Many tradfolk songs have loose lyrics, thin and incomplete, which drift from interpretation to interpretation, and thus invite the sort of minute lyrical analysis only a music historian could love. Today’s featured song is perhaps an extreme example of the problem of interpretation. It contains only twelve lines, four of which are merely repetitions of the previous line, and its lyrics are vague, naming lifelong trouble between narrator and spouse without ascribing cause.

Similarly, since the origins of traditional american folk songs like Rain and Snow are murky at best, historical analysis is no better an approach to understanding. Even the best write-ups can end up an exercise in cover geneology, offering little more than a litany of who-sang-and-when, ad infinitum. And this is the anathema of blogging, I suppose, which seems to me most specifically a medium of anecdotal small-scale sharing and interpretation, not mere enumeration.

But this is not to say that there is nothing we can say. The best approach to traditional song interpretation, I think, begins with a simple acknowledgement of what a song is. It is the parameters of possibility which make traditional folk song unique and interesting.

Rain and Snow, for example, is a beautiful, simple, melancholy song of spousal dissatisfaction which can be interpreted as many ways as humans can express such emotion. The way the doubled-lyrics degrade from storylyric to simple image to repeated, strung-out phrase at each verse’s end requires singers to howl their emotional choices open-voweled. The song’s last line leaves open the possibility that the song’s narrator has been the cause of his own resolution, without necessarily calling it either way.

When combined, these traits make for powerful potential in the hands of the coverartist. The unresolved narrative, coupled with the simple lyrical and chord patterns, leaves ample room for true interpretation. Indeed, it is the tonality and approach of a given coverartist which will ultimately determine whether we take these lyrics as melancholy or resigned, the narrative as sinister or merely regretful.

Rain and Snow is generally considered a traditional fiddle-and-folk appalachian folksong, though old folkies likely know it best from the works of Pentagle and the Grateful Dead; it is so much a part of the Deadhead canon, in fact, that it was included on jazz/folk/world music label Shanachie‘s “The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead”. Rather than rehash those old familiars, here’s a set of six stellar post-millenial versions, from folk to roots to celtic to true blue bluegrass, just to prove that there’s always more life to be had in tradsongs, the lifeblood of folk.


As always, wherever possible, artist and album links on Cover Lay Down go directly to each artist’s preferred sources for purchase — the best way to support musicians without giving money to unecessary middlemen. Order now, and put some tradition under the tree.

Today’s bonus rainsongs have all been performed by members of the Grateful Dead at one time or another, according to the Grateful Dead Lyric and Songfinder:

  • New Riders of the Purple Sage founder Dave Nelson covers the Grateful Dead’s Box of Rain (live)
  • Folk supergroup Redbird do a jangly version of Dylan’s Buckets of Rain
  • Neo-folkgrassers Crooked Still cover softly tradsong Wind and Rain

Previously on Cover Lay Down: Folk covers of songs of snow and winter

192 comments » | Be Good Tanyas, Blue Mountain, Crooked Still, Dave Nelson, Del McCoury, Grateful Dead, Peter Mulvey, Redbird, Single Song Sunday, solas, The Chieftains