It’s festival season again… the Austin City Limits line-up was finally released after weeks of guessing and speculating and full-schedules are rolling in left and right. Here’s our list of select festivals across the country with artists like Stevie Wonder, Calexico, The Dead Weather, The Avett Brothers, Richard Thompson and The Dave Rawlings Machine all hitting the festival circuit.
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The crowned queen of Telluride, Ms. Emmylou Harris, took the stage for the fourth time in as many days for her own set on the final night of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
With her band, the Red Dirt Boys, she ran through an hour and ten minutes of music, focusing on material from her “brunette days” and from her latest album, All I Intended to Be.
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In a set that seemed custom-made for the festival environment, the King of Telluride, Sam Bush, played his 36th Telluride Bluegrass Festival during the Satruday-evening time slot.
He joked that he was lucky to be only 38-years-old and playing his 36th festival and that he had known “about this gig for weeks.”
He told some stories about ‘Stringbean’ Akeman, his first time at Telluride and the formation of New Grass Revival and being told by Bill Monroe to stick with the fiddle instead of the mandolin. He declared he was left “verklempt” twice by his guests.
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Making his second appearance at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Todd Snider kept most of the crowd laughing with his blend of comedy and folk – even though his set ended twenty minutes before his time slot did.
With friends Ben Kaufmann and Jeff Austin he played tunes from his new album, The Excitement Plan and some old favorites, telling a few stories in between.
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Without the Sugarcanes, Elvis Costello fits only slightly better at a bluegrass festival than David Byrne. But adding Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan and Jim Lauderdale ups his bluegrass street-cred exponentially.
Promoting his new album, Secrets, Profane and Sugarcane he played the main stage in Town Park on Friday evening in what he dubbed the “cathedral of mountains.”
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The second of their Telluride shows, the Greencards’ main stage set included songs from their new album, Fascination (Chico Calling, Living on a Dream, The Avenue) as well as some older tunes (Patty Griffin’s What You Are).
Towards the end of their set, they invited Sam Bush to play a Bill Monroe tune with them, even though Kym, as a mandolin player jokingly admitted that playing with Sam would be intimidating.
More photos in the gallery.
Another not-so-bluegrass artist, Jenny Lewis, had a slew of fans singing along at her early evening set Friday on the main stage.
With help from her band and a special guest appearance by Elvis Costello, she ran through songs from both of her solo albums, a tribute to Emmylou Harris and a new tune.
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So he’s not bluegrass, or really even close enough to pretend but David Byrne played the Thursday night closing set taking the stage with his band – entirely dressed in white.
In what was quite possibly the first choreographed dance routine with office chairs, he played some new and some old Talking Heads tunes but “not much in between.”
Some highlights: Heaven, Cross eyed and Painless, Once In A Lifetime and Burning Down the House
More photos in the photo gallery.
