My Festival Memories By: Gary Robertson

I came to Bluegrass as an end of a search for music.  As a teenager I tried to be part of my generation by listening to the popular rock music of the time, but I also was listening to a music that was called Soul
music.  These performers included people like Otis Redding, Jr. Walker & The All-stars, Wilson Picket and others.  The rock music I gravitated toward was more of the type known today a “Bubble Gum” music. 
It included folks like The Association, Herman’s Hermits and others.

As I aged into my twenties and no
longer had the pressure of peers directing my way I began a search that led me to some very different musics.  I listened to March Band music.  Yeah, John Philip Sousa stuff.  Then I drifted toward Big Band music; Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and many others.  I still enjoy Big Band, but never purposefully listen to it anymore.  I still hadn’t found “my” music.

My brother, Jim, had a father-in-law (Garland Davis) that played the Mandolin.  Jim got interested in listening to him and bought a really cheap Guitar to try to learn to play.  Garland showed him the basic chords  and Jim began working on learning.  I’m not sure how I heard him play the Guitar, but I did and I thought “Wow, that’s
pretty neat.”

Christmas was coming up and I went to Lail’s Music in Colonial Heights and found an old long neck (Pete Seeger style) Silvertone Banjo for $40, so I bought it for Jim.  That was two months before Christmas, so it was lying around the house, so I started fooling with it and the sounds I heard were very
pleasing to me.  Finally the holiday did arrive and I had to give it to Jim.  Soon he began taking Banjo lessons from the late Arthur Rucker as part of an adult education program presented by the YMCA in
Manchester.  When I heard Jim start playing Cripple Creek, well it was then I decided I wanted a Banjo of my own.

At about that same time Gibson was doing a nationwide push of Banjos and Guitars and they had a representative from Gibson at Lail’s Music playing the Banjo.  Wow!  Upon hearing this guy play I knew I had to get a Banjo.  They had a big sale going on and were selling brand new Epiphone Banjos for $125 each.  Jim and I both bought one that day.  I started taking lessons along with
Jim and I began my journey into learning all about Bluegrass Music.

This was back in 1972 and the following spring we heard about a thing called a Bluegrass Festival.  “Pop. The Storekeeper” on WXGI mentioned this upcoming festival every day.  It was in Amelia County tucked right up against the 4-lane Rt. 360 and it was called “Bluegrass Grove.”  It was presented by Roy McCraw.  Jim and I decided to go there on the Sunday show.  We were initiated and immersed into the world of the Bluegrass festival.  I remember
we bands like, The Conrad Hinson Family, The Hughes Family, The Grass Reflection and The Cabin Hill Bluegrass Band.

Let me zoom forward about 25 years for a moment.  I was at the Graves’ Mountain
Festival and there was a fellow there trying to introduce a new Bluegrass and Acoustic music magazine.  I knew he had been the assistant editor at Bluegrass Unlimited, but that was all I recalled.  I passed by and we
spoke briefly when he asked me if I remembered those day at Bluegrass Grove?  I told him I did, but I wondered how he knew I went there.  He explained that he and his brother were part of The Cabin Hill Bluegrass Band and he remembered me from all those years before.  We are a big family of Bluegrass folks.

Jim & I were absolute rank beginners and it would be another five years before we go up the nerve to bring our instruments to a festival.  However it was at this first festival that I saw a vendor selling strings, picks and
other related Bluegrass stuff.  I bought a book called “The Bluegrass Fakebook.”  It had the words to 1,000 songs, some of which were part of the Bluegrass repertoire, but most were folk and rock ballads.  It didn’t have any chords listed, just the words.  Also, that day I bought a metal thumb pick made by Dunlap.  I had the problem of my plastic pick scraping the strings like a fiddle bow.  This metal pick was smooth and from that day to now I still use metal thumb picks made by Dunlop.  While we were at Bluegrass Grove we heard
about another festival coming up at another park in Amelia at Pete Pike’s farm,  We went to that one too, but again just for on single day.  After that first year Jim and I made regular trips to Amelia to both of those festivals.

A few years later Claude Warden started a Bluegrass festival in Amelia at Tom Scott Park.  His friend, Barney Jones, helped him with these festivals until after a few years, Claude found Jesus and was re-born and didn’t feel he could continue with presenting Bluegrass festivals and still be a good Christian.  It was around 1979 when Barney, along with the Powers Brothers, began presenting the festival at Tom Scott Park.

At around this same time period Martha White Mills created the Martha White Caravan (An 18 wheeler with a portable stage) and began presenting festivals with Lester Flatt & The Nashville Grass as the host band.  The first Martha White Caravan Festival was held in Mineral, Virginia at Walton Park in 1978.  Jim and Steve Waddell and I traveled to this festival and stayed in a motel nearby called Sacra’s Motel.  I remember I had an old 1972 Ford LTD and when we got to the motel and got out of the car there was this most awful
smell in the air.  We commented that if that restaurant smelled that bad we wouldn’t be eating there.  It turned out that my voltage regulator had went bad and I had been over-charging the battery.  When we opened the hood the top of the battery was moving and it was boiling hot and did it ever stink.  We got a new voltage regulator and everything was fine.

This was the same weekend when we sat in Sacra’s Restaurant with Lester Flatt and all those other Bluegrass greats.  A wonderful memory.  Another first happened at this festival.  This was the very first time that Steve, Jim and I got the nerve to get our instruments out and play in public.  Now, we weren’t very public because we got them out way out in the day parking far away from the “good pickers” down in the
festival proper.  We met a couple guys there that weekend named Simp Grant and Johnny Lett. We all played together the whole day and we discovered they lived near Hopewell, Virginia.  We began playing
together and decided to become a band.  I think the best thing about our band was the name.  Jim’s middle name is “Lee” and so we put that together with Simp’s last name “Grant” and named the band Lee & Grant & The Appomattox River Boys.  A great name for a pitifully poor group ofwould be musicians.

A year later John Hutchinson started presenting festivals at his Amelia Family Campground.  Jim and I were still making trips to festivals, but only for single days.  This is the way I attended the first couple of years at  Amelia Family Campground.  So now there were four festivals each season and during the summer of 1981 Jim and I were at an auction when we spotted a little tag-along camper.  We decided to bid on it and we got it for $500.  That September we decided we were going to spend the entire weekend at the “East Virginia Bluegrass
Festival” (That’s what the “fall” festival at the Amelia Family Campground was called back then.)  So, we got there and found a site right in the center of the campground.  And man-o-man, there was a big jam going
on while we were setting up camp.  This was gonna be really neat.  And it was.  There were some really great pickers in that jam including Barney Jones on Bass, Vic Sielski on Banjo and others.  The jam went
on all day and into the night.  This is the point when Jim figured out that staying at a festival all night was not for him.  He wanted to sleep, but these guys just kept on picking.  Jim didn’t get the sleep he wanted
and after that weekend I began travelling to festivals by myself.

I was fortunate to meet some folks at that
festival who have become fast friends and a large part on my Bluegrass life.  Camped right behind Jim and I were Scott & Elizabeth Westfall and their son and daughter-in-law Ralph & Rose Westfall.   Camped nearby was another couple, Chris & Chuck Humphreys.  Time has caused many changes since our first meeting, but we have all remained good friends to this day.

Just a year of so later I was at one of the last festivals presented by Barney Jones
when one of Richmond’s most beloved Bluegrass performers, Uncle Leroy, actually had a heart attack and fell dead on the stage.  I was not actually watching the stage show, but I heard the crash as he fell.  It reverberated throughout the park through the sound system.  Things got very quiet and within moments someone came to the campsite and told us Uncle Leroy had died.  There was a pall cast over the remainder of the festival, but those of us who were there will never forget that day.

Since those days many more festivals have come into existence and many of those older ones have faded away.  Through the years I have had three different campers.  There was that first one Jim and I bought together.  I used it for a long time,
but found a motor home at an auction sale.  It was in awful condition, but I thought I could make it usable.  I spent money on a new engine, but while attendingone “Central Virginia Family Bluegrass Music Festivals” the bed crumbledand I fell through it.  I drove it back home and never again started it up.  I finally gave it away.  Then I bought the little camper I use to this day.  It is an old camper, made in 1974, but it serves the purpose of giving me a place to sleep and keep all of my Bluegrass junk.

I still attend the two festivals in Amelia presented by John & Fern Hutchinson and I also camp at “Graves’ Mountain Festival of Music.”  I think I should mention here a wonderful festival that has come and gone, but is part of my fondest memories of Bluegrass.  This festival was “The Christopher Run Bluegrass Festival.”  It was presented at the Christopher Run Campground on Lake Anna near Mineral, Virginia by Jean & Sam Bazzanella.  This was a beautiful spot for a festival and Jean & Sam did it right.  I really miss Christopher Run.

Now there are many festivals, some of which I only make day trips and others at which I take the camper and enjoy the very
different experience of actually living at the festival.   The camping experience truly is very different.  It means you can stay up very late enjoying jams, whether you participate or simply stand around and listen.  It means getting up to the sounds of Bluegrass and smelling bacon and eggs being cooked all around the campground.  It is being seen and seeing folks that are part of your Bluegrass family.  Hey, I never liked camping, and if I were to tell you the truth I probably still don’t, but I do dearly love the feeling of togetherness that can only come from camping together among others who are there for the very same reason as you.  They love Bluegrass music!

We’ve just returned from the “Cabin Fever Pickin’ Party” and we are now anxiously awaiting the warms days of spring and those first Bluegrass festivals.  I’ve been attending Bluegrass festivals for about 37 years and if it were possible I would do it another 37.  I do know I will go to and be a part of Bluegrass festivals as long as I possibly can.  Please join me and share my love for that special phenomenon that is The Bluegrass Festival.