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Echo, Bill Miller, and I headed down to the 10th annual Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion in Virginia/Tennessee this weekend.With 20 indoor and outdoor stages surrounding the festival grounds of State Street the choices of good music have so far been innumerable. Here’s a quick recap of some of the music we’ve enjoyed so far.
Friday
We started our Reunion out with a set from Dale Ann Bradley, Kim Fox and Steve Gulley… their cover of the U2 song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” got the crowd going. Although as Kim pointed out, technically Dale Ann is singing “ferr”.
Several of the stages are in restaurants. Here’s Boss Hawg performing at Machiavelli’s.
We heard the Infamous Stringdusters, in the completely packed Paramount Theatre. A beautifully restored 1931 theatre with all the details including a Wurlitzer Organ. Below is a shot of the “Ladies Lounge”. The venue itself was too big for my camera to get a nice picture. Safe to say though the Dusters played a set of crowd-pleasing, technically skilled bluegrass. Particularly nice was the brand-new instrumental written by banjo player Chris Pandolfi named Connecticut Caretaker. It was interesting to see the band actually thinking about what they were going to play on the new tune.
We also caught Cadillac Sky at the Paramount and bits of The New Familiars on the State Street stage as the night wore on.
Saturday
…started off well with a very good piece of quiche from the Troutdale Bistro on State Street.
The first music we heard was The Steel Wheels on the Piedmont stage. They had the noon time crowd singing along to most tunes, including they’re unusual cover of Paula Adbul’s Straight Up.
On our way to check out the Blackbird Bakery (with homemade doughnuts!) we ran across Farm & Fun Time Alley – Farm & Fun Time is the WCYB Bristol radio show that gave The Stanley Brothers their start.
Lots more music to come, stay tuned…
Cheers,
Jen
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