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Dan Kegley/Sound technicians adjust microphones for Pine Mountain Railroad as emcee Tim White engages the audience Thursday during the first afternoon of the Song of the Mountains bluegrass festival and Smyth County Celebration.

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Celebrating music of mountains

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

The Song of the Mountains bluegrass festival and Smyth County Celebration at Davis Valley Winery got off to a sunny start Thursday. The early attendees, on hand for the 3 p.m. opening by Mac Puckett & The Good Company Band, took refuge from the sun beneath two big tents.
The hardcore bluegrass fans, as emcee Tim White called them, sat in the open, in front of the clamshell stage, soaking up the sun and sounds.
“The working people will be here after while,” White told the small audience that did swell as people clocked off of their 8-to-5’s and made their way to the winery.
Those who were there during the mid-afternoon included retired and vacationing folks. Some drove in that day. Others were camped around the area if not at the winery itself where campers arrived as early as Wednesday to claim hilltop places for the weekend.
“Who’s here?” White asked the audience. “Raise your hand.”
“Who’s not arrived yet? Raise your hand.”
Off stage as the second band, Pine Mountain Railroad, began its set, White said the early attendance was “about like last year,” the festival’s debut. “Once people get off work, it’ll start filling up. This bottom area will be full and they’ll be scattered on back here.”
Uphill from the stage, vendors were set to sell a delectable combination of fried onions and sweet potatoes, polish sausages and other festival foods. The winery sold wine by the glass. Lincoln Theatre staff and volunteers, whose facility is home for the Song of the Mountains concert series filmed for PBS and aired across the country, sold shirts, caps and mugs.
One tent was set up at last year’s festival for shelter, White said, and the two this year will better meet the audience’s need for respite from the sunshine and retreat from the rain that White said would not fall on the festival.
“Charlie Clark said it wouldn’t rain, in one of our committee meetings,” White said. “If it rains, it’s Charlie’s fault.”
A couple of years ago, Clark wanted to start a celebration for the entire county whose individual communities hold their own annual events – Chilhowie’s Apple Festival, Saltville’s Labor Day celebration, Marion’s Downtown Days are a few.
By then, Song of the Mountains was hitting its stride, picked up by dozens of PBS affiliates and packing the Lincoln Theatre. That brand, extended to a bluegrass festival in partnership with the new Smyth County Celebration, would create that event for the county.
And Davis Valley Winery, with its spaciousness, scenery and stage, and already accustomed to hosting its own big events, would be a new venue apart from the traditional community festival settings.
With more than a dozen bands on the lineup, from locals Fescue and No Speed Limit to Rhonda Vincent and the Rage and Goose Creek Symphony, the festival audiences are hearing a variety of styles and material in the bluegrass genre.
Lou Reid & Carolina took the stage Thursday afternoon with a sound ranging from driving to slow and with some gospel in the mix. Something, though, was different in their sound, a different low end.
Where bluegrass bands traditionally employ a thumpy, deep upright bass, variously called string bass, bass fiddle and doghouse bass among other names, Christy Reid anchors the band’s rhythms and chords on a Martin acoustic-electric bass guitar. Imagine a full-body acoustic guitar with four strings spanning a long neck, an instrument that carries the bass part with a low but lighter sound than the more common upright bass.
“Even unplugged, it has a big sound,” she said backstage, sounding loud, low open notes on the A and D strings on the instrument that is more portable than a 6-foot tall doghouse.
“And much easier to fly with,” she said.
The group gets around. Between April and August, Lou Reid & Carolina will play in Georgia, Colorado, North Carolina, Michigan, and Edmonton, Alberta.
Plus they’ll return in November to the Song of the Mountains stage at the Lincoln Theatre in Marion.
The festival concludes today with a full lineup of bands, plus two workshops at 11 a.m. and noon (see Community, Page B1).
And a new feature this year is something common to music festivals – campground jam sessions.
“I gave tickets to the Smyth County Jam people to encourage jamming on the campground,” White said. From the stage Thursday, White invited folks to bring their instruments Friday and Saturday to get in on the pickin’.
There were early indications Thursday that White’s plan for jams was bearing fruit. Working the ticket tent, musician and White’s cohort Larry McPeak said he was planning to jam, and that a camper on the hill was already setting up for a session that evening.