One week of music playing and watching, camping, walking around aimlessly in hope of finding your musical soul mate (or more realistically to find more or less someone your level to play with), learning new stuff, eating croissants and Tomme de Savoie. By the time the actual festival starts, your mind is totally blown wondering how the youngest generation of bluegrass talents can achieve such dexterity and musicality. I havent been able to watch all artists, but Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band and A.J Lee and Blue Summit have performed incredible concerts, my heart is forever with Della Mae who – to me – rocked the stage like no other. We were also really proud to see our friends of Uzer Trio and Shades of Nights play the on and off festivals: I loved their carefully curated repertoire performed with love and humour, solid bass drive and killer banjo and guitar breaks.
I participated to the musician workshop for the first time this year, and was pleased to find a few of our fellows Swiss romande bluegrass players. The workshop is hosting classes for mandolin, double bass, banjo, fiddle and guitar, – maybe dobro ? – as well as a Kids workshop. An afternoon is also dedicated to an introduction to harmony singing. The workshop is adapted for beginner and advanced players, with French- and an English-speaking instructors. I personally struggled as a medium player to meet people who are not too beginners and not too advanced for me – I know they were probably the majority but I just felt too impressed by everyone ! Although I opted out of the Thursday Concert for Workshop participant, I would recommend participating, as it allows you to form new friendships. Overall, everyone was so nice and SO HAPPY to be able to speak of their instruments and Bluegrass. Since we were put up in a high school dorm, it felt like we were all in a Bluegrass geek orphanage, (in a comical and heart-warming kind of way 🙂
I highly recommend to experience the Music Workshop in addition to the festival, maybe next year we ll do it together and create a Geneva Bluegrass Campsite ? I am only half-joking.
Here are a few pictures, a thousand other amazing things happened… I didn’t get a picture of Della Mae and their amazing jumpsuit for example.
Beautiful La Roche sur Foron
Late night Jam on place de la Mairie
Banjo Class with Dr Banjo Pete Wernick
Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band
Jam sous les arcades
Shades of Night and friends
A.J Lee and Blue Summit
Uzer trio on the afternoon stage