No chairs allowed beyond 30 feet from the stage so you can dance your shoes off. photo by Cindy Steele
Infamous Stringdusters, Darol Anger, and brother-and-sister duo Giri and Uma Peters— and get to know nearby acts like Ida Clare, Flatland Harmony Experiment, and White Lightning Boys. Each day of the Festival opens with an all-Hartford set, and professional musician Jeff Burke leads a handson Jam Camp Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for players who want to join a jam session but don’ t know where to start.
So far, Tom’ s philosophy( or is it John Hartford’ s?) has worked well: ticket sales continue to be strong every Festival( the first two pricing tiers for this year are already sold out), and about 40 % of the audience travels over 200 miles to attend. But Tom measures success in a different way, he says.“ I’ ll walk through the camping areas in the middle of the night, or stop by one of the organized jams, and there are just dozens of musicians who don’ t know each other having a blast playing together. Or people who are Hartford specialists will share their knowledge
about his life and music. Or bands will perform Hartford’ s songs onstage, and it’ s just overwhelming. It always comes back to the way John Hartford lived and played.”
Key to JHMF’ s popularity is its location.“ I can’ t think of a more ideal place to have this event every year,” Tom says.“ I tried to set up a similar music festival one year, seventy miles outside of Nashville. It didn’ t come close to attracting what this festival does. Brown County in general is beautiful, and with the bluegrass festival at Bill Monroe Park every year, Bean Blossom’ s got a real musical heritage to it. So continuing to have the Hartford Festival there is a natural fit. The only negative might be that there’ s just too much music to see it all every year.”
More information about the 8th annual John Hartford Memorial Festival, including ticketing for the event, can be found at < johnhartfordmemfest. com >. • Co-promoter John Hotze. photo by Cindy Steele
May / June 2018 • Our Brown County 21