So I’m really excited about this festival we’re building. There are all kinds of reasons: all of the talented artists that will grace the stage, the great friends that will fill the fields, all of the ideas that have already been born, all of the new collaborations, all of the tiny revelations. But, more than anything, there is one big idea at the center of this event that I have not fully articulated. I’ve been thinking a lot about why Kentucky - and Louisville may be the recent exception to this - but why Kentucky in general is not a place where artists and musicians can thrive. States like Texas and North Carolina, cities like New Orleans, Portland and Athens, GA have great music scenes because they trumpet their local artists. The Austin City Limits Music Festival is a monster mega-festival, but right before the huge international headlining act on the main stage, and immediately after them, are Texas bands you may not know at all. They’re equal in the eyes of the festival. They get points for being local. In Kentucky we eat our own. Our festivals ask local bands to play for free, year after year, putting them on lesser stages at off times to fill out their line-up cards. Our biggest stage, the Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour, has shit on locals for years. Our downtown events book cover bands, no one goes out to shows on weekday nights and no one seems to think a bluegrass band deserves as much compensation as a jazz band or a classical trio. When all you get are scraps, you fight over them. There’s no community of musicians in Lexington; everyone competes over what little there is to gather. Who will lift up local bands if venues don’t promote them and fellow artists won’t befriend them? How do you make it as a band from Kentucky? Well, you leave of course. You relocate to another city where there is more of a scene, more of a community, more cache attached to the place by your name. Kentucky breeds as many quality musicians as anywhere in America, though. We invented a style that has influenced pop culture as much as any in American music. You can hear strains of it in every hard-strumming indie folk-rock act out there on the road. We have great teachers, who are also incredible players: grandmaster fiddle champions, legendary banjo players, flatpickers, mandolin players and songwriters. Why would you expect more from a band out of St. Louis, or Colorado, or New York? I don’t know that one festival can make a scene; but I also think that it just might. If we can build it and grow it, year-after-year, roping in the big international headliners that we all want to see, but keeping Kentucky artists at the core, what difference could we make? If we can step up as a community and pay Kentucky artists - and this includes writers, poets, dancers, visual artists and performance artists as well – pay them what they deserve, give them a stage worthy of their abilities, celebrate their talent and show them off with the pride of a community that loves and respects its artists … well, how far could we go to change the culture here in the Bluegrass? 3 Days Left. Are you in?
Posted on: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 15:12:34 +0000
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