Event organizer Tom Burkhart.
Local group Bluegill in the Slaw at the Hippy Hill stage during the 2018 festival.
Burkhart said one of the things he likes most about the festival is that it is small enough that attendees can get close to every performance and not feel lost in the crowd.
“ We cap attendance because we always want you to be able to walk up to the stage without fighting a giant crowd. At some festivals, it’ s tough to even see who is playing,” he said.“ Here you might even walk up to the band and talk to the performers after the show because they are watching the next band.”
The festival features performances on three stages from late morning until late in the night, with roundthe-clock campground jams, a songwriting contest and a band contest.
“ Our unique festival maintains a genre busting line-up like no other festival with a list of performers whose music is varied, different, fresh and original, and rooted in the Spirit of John Hartford,” Burkhart said.“ This year’ s lineup is diverse and speckled with musicians who have direct
” Our headliners are the folks who include the legends and those who are making the biggest waves across the vast ocean of music that we call Americana, Roots, and Bluegrass.”
— Tom Burkhart connections to our festival namesake. Our headliners are the folks who include the legends and those who are making the biggest waves across the vast ocean of music that we call Americana, Roots, and Bluegrass.”
The festival has featured bands from nearly every state in the United States, and bands from as far away as Canada, Brazil, and Australia.
Burkhart said he thinks the festival’ s namesake, John Hartford would be proud of the festival.
Dubbed the Father of Newgrass, Hartford was a bassy-voiced, dancing fiddler / banjo picking songwriter, and inadvertent shepherd of the roots music movement.
“ In many ways, John Hartford is the Mark Twain of traditional music,” Mick Buck, the Country Music Hall of Fame’ s Museum’ s curator of collections, has said.“ He was a beloved American figure whose influence went far beyond his commercial success. He brought literacy, humor, and inventiveness to his music and an eclectic sense of adventure to his life. He was a true artist in every sense of the word.”
A mentor for a generation of Continued on 50
May / June 2019 • Our Brown County 49