2008 Lineup
We are excited to announce the complete schedule for the 36th Annual RockyGrass, July 25-27, 2008.
Friday, July 25
10:00am — Gates Open
10:30 - 11:30am — Spring Creek
11:45 - 12:45pm — Mike Marshall & Darol Anger
1:00 - 2:15pm — The Steeldrivers
2:30 - 3:45pm — Russ Barenberg & Bryan Sutton
4:00 - 5:15pm — John Cowan Band
5:30 - 6:45pm — Béla Fleck & Friends
7:15 - 8:30pm — Dan Tyminski Band
9:00 - 10:30pm — Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas & Edgar Meyer
Saturday, July 26
9:30am — Gates Open
10:00 - 11:30am — Instrument Contest Finals
11:45 - 12:45pm — Chatham County Line
1:00 - 2:15pm — Bearfoot
2:30 - 3:45pm — Infamous Stringdusters
4:00 - 5:15pm — Psychograss
5:30 - 6:45pm — Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet
7:15 - 8:30pm — Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile
9:00 - 10:30pm — Natalie MacMaster & Donnell Leahy
Sunday, July 27
10:00am — Gates Open
11:00 - 12:15am — GarrettGrass Gospel Extravaganza
12:30 - 1:45pm — The Stairwell Sisters
2:00 - 3:15pm — Adrienne Young Band
3:30 - 4:45pm — JD Crowe & The New South
5:00 - 6:15pm — Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band
6:45 - 8:00pm — Carolina Chocolate Drops
8:30 - 10:00pm — Sam Bush Bluegrass Band
Tickets are now completely sold-out. Check out our Festivarian Forum to trade tickets with your fellow Festivarian. Make sure to sign up for the "Notes from the Planet" email newsletter for all the latest updates.
Dynamic on stage, down to earth off stage, Dan Tyminski has the voice, instrumental chops, and charisma to be counted among the most recognizable and popular male vocalists on today’s bluegrass and country music scenes. Since 1994, his ace instrumental skill (mainly on guitar, but also on mandolin) and burnished, soulful tenor singing has been a key component of Alison Krauss and Union Station, arguably the most visible and successful bluegrass band in the modern era. Prior to that, he rose to national prominence as a member of bluegrass favorite, the Lonesome River Band. With Union Station on hiatus for most of 2008, Tyminski has formed a new incarnation of the Dan Tyminski Band, with whom he is currently recording a new album and preparing a national tour of festivals, arts centers, and listening rooms. This new edition includes longtime Union Station associate Barry Bales (bass), former Union Station and Mountain Heart member Adam Steffey (mandolin), sideman extraordinaire Ron Stewart (banjo, fiddle), and newcomer Justin Moses (fiddle, dobro). 
With a talent that remains both raw and wondrously refined, and backed by a band any top musician would be proud of, Natalie Mac Master continues to stun crowds around the globe with her feverish fiddling and mesmerizing step dancing. Natalie first picked up the fiddle at age nine and hasn’t looked back. The niece of famed Cape Breton fiddler Buddy Mac Master (with whom she recorded a tribute album in 2005), Natalie quickly became a major talent in her own right. While acclaimed for taking Celtic music to new heights, each album Natalie releases displays a creativity and range that constantly expands the boundaries of the genre. 2003’s remarkable Blueprint combined Natalie’s own musical radiance with the cream of American roots instrumentalists, including Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, and Edgar Meyer, and won her “Best Female Artist of the Year” and “Best Roots/Traditional Solo Recording” at Canada’s East Coast Music Awards in 2005.
Though he admits a certain discomfort with the moniker "King of Newgrass," Sam Bush has more than earned it. As cofounder and leader of the seminal progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival through 18 years during the 1970s and '80s, Bush may not be the only person responsible for newgrass, the wild bluegrass stepchild that features rock 'n' roll grooves and extended virtuosic jams, but since New Grass Revival's dissolution in 1989, Bush has certainly been one of the most brilliant of newgrass's many bright lights. Besides helming the ever-popular Sam Bush Band, featured on the current release Laps in Seven, the mandolin prodigy from Kentucky has been a prodigious influence on musicians young and old. Bands like Nickel Creek, Yonder Mountain String Band, and String Cheese Incident, to name just a few, are indebted to Bush's example, not only in his wide-ranging choice of material and rock-based acoustic grooves, but by his captivating, high-energy live shows, which have earned him the title of "King of Telluride" and a favorite at RockyGrass, where he makes the only performance of the year with his "only-at-RockyGrass" Sam Bush Bluegrass Band.
featuring Chris Thile
The line-up of Punch Brothers—whose name is taken from the Mark Twain short story, Punch, Brothers, Punch!—is formidable. Thile released the first of five solo albums when he was just thirteen and, by the time he was 20, he was attracting a following among pop, country, and alternative-rock audiences as a member of the Grammy Award–winning Nickel Creek. A Washington Post critic recently said Thile “may well be the most virtuosic American ever to play the mandolin.” His equally youthful, prodigiously gifted band-mates are among the most in-demand performers in the worlds of bluegrass, folk, and traditional music. Guitarist Chris Eldridge was a founding member of the Infamous Stringdusters and occasionally sits in with his dad Ben’s band, The Seldom Scene; bassist Greg Garrison has played with trumpeter Ron Miles and Leftover Salmon—along with banjo player Noam Pikelny. Pikelny has performed and recorded as a solo artist and has collaborated with acoustic music heavyweights John Cowan and Tony Trischka. Violinist Gabe Witcher, a life-long friend of Thile’s, is a sought-after session man who has recorded with a range of artists from Willie Nelson to Beck to Randy Newman.
By ignoring orthodoxy, these three virtuosos have forever altered the musical landscape of their respective instruments. As a founding member of Newgrass Revival, Sam Bush established the mandolin as a source of power and syncopation thanks to his percussive chop and his new harmonic vocabulary which embraces rock, reggae, Afro-pop, and jazz. The transcendent technique and passionate musicality of Dobro player Jerry Douglas have helped establish the Dobro as a versatile instrument, able to break the stylistic barriers between rock, jazz, country, and Celtic settings - recognized by 12 Grammy awards and Musician of the Year awards from the Country Music Association (twice) and the Academy of Country Music (10 times). Double bassist Edgar Meyer continues to redefine what is possible on his instrument as both a performer and a composer - whether interpreting Bach's cello suites, performing as a symphony soloist, or collaborating with giants like Mark O'Connor, Yo-Yo Ma, and Zakir Hussain.
These three acoustic innovators are also some of music's consummate collaborators, exploring the limitless space between a bowed string, a slide, and a pick.
This all-star acoustic quartet led by Abigail Washburn (Uncle Earl) and partner Béla Fleck exploring intricate, thoughtful arrangements of old songs and gripping instrumental tunes, all with the underlying influence of the Far East. Along with co-members Casey Driessen and Ben Sollee, the Sparrow Quartet has visited China and Tibet as musical ambassadors, doing what mass media cannot in representing contemporary American culture. Says the Wall Street Journal: "Washburn is a daring, definite talent...Soulful is the word. On stage, her voice resonated with the power of a seasoned performer and her poetic hill tunes sounded all the more evocative in Chinese."
Five of the world's most virtuosic and daring string musicians: mandolinist Mike Marshall, fiddler Darol Anger, guitarist David Grier, banjo player Tony Trischka, and bassist Todd Phillips. Together they ring with the authority of musicians who have mastered a vast swath of American music styles, yet are still exploring. The band's deep Bluegrass roots form the grounding for a subtle and kaleidoscopic blend which include, jazz, rock, classical, and other international flavors woven into the sound of each player, expressed as a conversation, sometimes earthy, sometimes highfalutin', always present in the moment. Recent appearances on PBS television, satellite radio, and at big summer music festivals have made Psychograss near-legendary for fans of high-level daredevil bluegrass played without a net.
Bluegrass that is inventive and relevant to modern audiences while still resonating with the music’s deeply held sense of heritage is as rare as it is thrilling. J. D. Crowe and the New South are among the most influential bluegrass bands of the past three decades, with a visionary sound that suggests both a rich past and a wide-open future. From 1975’s classic J. D. Crowe and the New South (affectionately referred to by fans by its catalog number, 0044), to their newest project, 2006’s Lefty’s Old Guitar, bandleader/banjo player/guitarist/vocalist Crowe has lead an array of brilliant musicians in a mission to continually reinvent and update bluegrass while simultaneously paying tribute to the legacy of tone, taste, and timing established by Crowe’s musical idols.
Eight-time Grammy Award winner Béla Fleck was fascinated with the banjo from an early age, but his teachers kept pushing him to play other instruments. Luckily, he kept up with the banjo — when he wasn't being forced to sing tenor or play the French horn. This richly diverse background has earned him Grammy nominations in more different categories than anyone in Grammy history - including jazz, country, classical, pop, bluegrass, and spoken word. Through tenures with Newgrass Revival, The Flecktones, Strength in Numbers, and numerous ongoing collaborations, Béla has become one of the premiere banjo players in the world. Béla will be celebrating his 27th consecutive year at Telluride Bluegrass.
Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band
A Grammy-award winning musician, Peter Rowan's career has spanned from Sea Train to Old & In the Way to numerous solo and ensemble projects with Don Edwards, David Grisman, Richard Greene and others. He is a soulful singer and a poignant songwriter. He began his professional career playing guitar, singing lead vocals and co-writing as a member of the Bluegrass Boys, led by the founding father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe. He embarked on a well-received solo career in the late '70s, releasing such diverse and critically acclaimed albums as Dustbowl Children and Bluegrass Boy, as well as much-admired collaborations with ace Dobro player Jerry Douglas, Flaco Jimenez, and his brothers Christopher and Lorin Rowan. Iconoclastic and innovative, Rowan has a long history of expanding the musical boundaries of his loyal fans and contributing landmark works to the bluegrass canon.
For more than thirty years, fiddler Darol Anger and multi-instrumentalist Mike Marshall have helped spearhead the most crucial developments in contemporary string band music. Their list of projects — both together and independently — includes: the David Grisman Quintet (founding members), the Tony Rice Unit, The Montreux Band, Turtle Island String Quartet, Modern Mandolin Quartet, Psychograss, Newgrange, the Heritage project, Choro Famoso, and The Fiddlers 4. Together as a duo, Darol and Mike cover a Beatlesque cornucopia of new and ambitious works, carrying their radically deep concepts into even more intense places: massed orchestral fiddles & mandolins of all sizes, rocking and Bach-ing. The Chicago Tribune describes their collaborations as having an "almost giddy creativity," while the Austin American Statesman says "Anger and Marshall gave an object lesson in the curative powers of simple virtuosity."
John Cowan Band
With a voice that moves easily between musical styles and blends and bends genres into creative new forms, John has been one of the most significant voices in acoustic music over the past thirty years. After inspiring and entertaining fans for nearly two decades as the lead singer for New Grass Revival, John Cowan continues to chase his creative muse, following it all over the musical landscape from rock to soul to blues and beyond. As the 21st century began, the Evansville, Indiana-native found himself circling slowly, inexorably back to the acoustic music that he knew so well, culminating in the founding of the current John Cowan Band. "For me it's coming back to something I know really well," he says. "It's been a coming home of sorts."
Sophistication and style are the hallmark of these two brilliant guitarists. Russ Barenberg got his start in 1970 with the groundbreaking bluegrass band Country Cooking and since then has been a member of a variety of highly influential groups, most notably his collaboration from 1989 to 2001 in a trio with dobro master Jerry Douglas and bassist Edgar Meyer. Since his debut solo album in 1979 - including last year's collection When At Last - Russ has been widely recognized as one of the premier composers and arrangers in the emerging new acoustic scene. Five-time IBMA Guitar Player of the Year, Bryan Sutton picked up the guitar at the age of eight, initially immersed in rock and jazz playing, but soon captivated by the rhythms and melodies of bluegrass. After high school, Sutton joined Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder for their landmark Bluegrass Rules album. Since leaving Kentucky Thunder in 1999, he has become one of the most in-demand guitarists in bluegrass, both on the road and in the studio, earning him three Grammy Awards.
Emerging from a lively community of friends and colleagues that’s taken root in Nashville, these six musicians of the Infamous Stringdusters are poised at the point where youthful energy is balanced with maturity, inspiration with discipline and creativity with experience. The biggest winner at the 2007 IBMA awards - including album of the year (for their debut Fork in the Road) and song of the year - they are schooled in tradition yet able to stretch out in jam band style improvisation, endowed with razor-sharp vocals, fiery instrumental abilities and a rapidly growing repertoire of well-crafted original songs and tunes. Says Tim Stafford: “they’re young, bright, articulate, immensely talented, and they can sing in the old style or in their own style. I think they’re the vanguard of what bluegrass music is going to become”
The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a group of young African-American stringband musicians that have come to together to play the rich tradition of fiddle and banjo music in Carolinas’ piedmont. Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson both hail from the green hills of the North Carolina Piedmont while Dom Flemons is native to sunny Arizona. Although they have diverse musical backgrounds, they draw from their musical heritage from the foothills of the North and South Carolina. They have been under the tutelage of Joe Thompson, said to be the last black traditional string band player, of Mebane, NC and they strive to carry on the long standing traditional music of the black and white communities. Joe’s musical heritage runs as deeply and fluidly as the many rivers and streams that traverse our landscape.
Banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar and bass certainly conjure certain musical images to mind, and in the past CCL had been content to play the part - a fun loving bluegrass band touring endlessly, summers full of festivals and hi-jinx. But with the release of their aptly titled fourth album IV, the band are ready to get down to business, "We started the band as a way to hang out and drink beer. Slowly it turns into a career. This record is about growing up and becoming a band." Says noted producer Chris Stamey, "They've used bluegrass as a jumping off point, a vernacular through which to access all that is roots music, be that gospel, country, rock or pop. That's American music and they are an American band."
Only Nashville could give birth to a band like the SteelDrivers: a group of seasoned veterans – each distinguished in his or her own right, each valued in the town’s commercial community – who are seizing an opportunity to follow their hearts to their souls’ reward. In doing so, they are braiding their bluegrass roots with new threads of their own design, bringing together country, soul, and other contemporary influences to create an unapologetic hybrid. This is new music with the old feeling. SteelDrivers fan Vince Gill describes the band’s fusion as simply “an incredible combination.” The band’s self-titled debut profoundly resonates with classic bluegrass soul while exploring entirely modern lyrical and harmonic byways. The blistering, soulful vocals of guitarist and songwriter Chris Stapleton immediately announce that this is dark and dangerous terrain, which the SteelDrivers’ rugged ensemble playing quickly confirms.
A seventh-generation Floridian, raised on the land farmed by her family generations earlier, Young graduated magna cum laude from Belmont University with a Music Business/Spanish degree. Endless and unfulfilling clerical jobs along Music Row motivated this triple-threat singer, writer and multi-instrumentalist to start her own record label, Addiebelle Music. She used her public exposure from the start to laud positive organizations and issues, becoming a champion for sustainable agriculture. Now living in Nashville, Adrienne's three albums have earned her a Grammy nomination (most unusual feat for a debut indie release), national radio exposure on NPR, and appearances on numerous “best of” lists, including a “Best Country Single of the Year” citation from the Nashville Scene, third place in the Amazon.com list of “best folk recordings of the year,” and benediction from the Los Angeles Times as “the Americana find of the year.”
It is but one
word, but it slyly nods to the wilds of their native Alaska; it
conjures images of rural stringband musicians; and in its simple
elegance, it elevates the quintet to the top of a cultural mountain
where they overlook the past, present, and future of American music,
seeing it as one single, continuous Bearfoot frontier. Boasting five distinctive lead voices, they
showcase a remarkable breadth of rich original songs, each inspired by
landscapes, emotions, and stories. Balanced by sonorous female trio
harmonies and the swells of twin fiddles, their arrangements soar with smoky, spacious lyricism. To the musicians
of Bearfoot who were raised in this musical community, lines were
never drawn between bluegrass, old-time, and blues. Our modern musical
fusions were a practical and natural consequence of their small music
community and this value is instilled deeply in Bearfoot. Just two years after their initial meeting as camp counselors in 1999,
Bearfoot earned one of roots music's most prestigious awards –
Telluride Bluegrass band champions. Now after years of national
touring , Bearfoot is the future of American roots music – with bluegrass in their hearts and the
broadly-visioned horizon of the American frontier in their souls.
Get swept up in the “hurricane called The Stairwell Sisters.” San Francisco’s all-gal old-time string band is kicking up a storm in American roots music. These energetic multi-instrumentalists combine skilled musical chops, with tight harmonies and red hot buckdancing by Evie Ladin. With a rowdy repertoire of timeless tunes and smart, original music, the quintet is gaining international attention. All of the sisters sing, and they have a knack for infusing the old music with intoxicating energy and soul. In the past year, the gals have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, as well as festival stages from Lincoln Center in NYC to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in SF, Celtic Connections in the UK, and many points in between. This Spring they will release their third CD, produced by Dixie Chicks' producer Lloyd Maines.
Sunday Morning Gospel Set
Fiddler and singer Jeremy Garrett has performed with an array of bluegrass artists, including Bobby Osborne, Chris Jones, and Audie Blaylock, backed award-winning country singer Lee Ann Womack, and released an album (Garrett Grass, Bluegrass Gospel) with his father, Glen Garrett, that featured dozens of top-shelf bluegrass pickers and singers. In 2005, Jeremy made the leap from side-man to partner as one of the founders of the IBMA award winners The Infamous Stringdusters. For his Sunday morning set Jeremy will be joined by many friends including members of the Stringdusters for a stirring set of bluegrass gospel.
Thanks to victories in the band contests at both Telluride Bluegrass and RockyGrass, Spring Creek
is quickly gaining a reputation as the hottest young band in the Rocky Mountains. The quartet play a mix of bluegrass standards and compelling originals, and all four musicians are also accomplished vocalists. The young band, whose members met in music school in Texas, have studied and performed together for several years, creating a tight, polished sound. Counting such bands as Country Gazette and Hot Rize among their influences, Spring Creek's members have a deep respect for tradition, as well as an innate sense of musical innovation. In late 2006, Spring Creek released Rural & Cosmic Bluegrass, a 12-track album of kickin' Colorado bluegrass that has impressed fans, critics, DJs and festival producers alike. "Spring Creek has redefined what can be accomplished on acoustic instruments," says Chris Kelly of the Crested Butte Weekly.
Tickets are now completely sold-out. Check out our Festivarian Forum to trade tickets with your fellow Festivarian. Make sure to sign up for the "Notes from the Planet" email newsletter for all the latest updates.