ROMP: Dancing on the Shoulders of Giants
Yellow Creek Park Stage at ROMP
This June, hundreds of musicians—many representing the first generation of bluegrass—will descend upon Owensboro, Kentucky as The International Bluegrass Music Museum presents its seventh annual ROMP (River of Music Party).
Taking place June 23rd through 26th, the festival will offer a stacked main stage lineup, which for starters features Doc Watson, Roland White, Dismembered Tennesseans, Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike, Pete and Joan Wernick, Daily & Vincent, The John Cowan Band, and Packway Handle Band, plus bands from Japan, Hungary, and Sweden, all at an incredibly affordable ticket price ($75 for a 4-day pass and free camping at lovely Yellow Creek Park, which also serves as a venue site).
Besides numerous workshops and jamming opportunities, the museum setting also offers an array of special activities you won’t find at any other festival. Perhaps the most noteworthy is the Pioneers of Bluegrass Gathering, which brings together our musical forefathers and mothers to honor their legacy. Further, this year’s ROMP will include the largest reunion of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys band members ever attempted.
“When we have the festival, there are all these exhibits that open,” IBMM director Gabrielle Gray says. “The whole nature of a museum is a mission to preserve the past for the present, so you have this whole element of being wrapped up in history. You’re getting the roots of it. [The music lineup doesn’t] stick with just the traditional bluegrass; we have progressive bluegrass and sometimes we have things that are not strictly bluegrass.”
“So in that regard it’s very much like the other bluegrass festivals,” Gray continues. “But the element of having educational forums with the first generation telling their life stories, and the recognition ceremonies, and the unveiling of the hall of fame, and the legends concert—all these things are very much unique to this festival. If you’re really into the history of [bluegrass] and the origins, and the preservation of it, then this [festival] is going to be very attractive…I would probably walk a long way to go to a festival like this, just because there’s so many iconic figures that attend every year. Fifty to 100 of the first generation are here every single year.”
Pete Wernick echoes that sentiment. “It’s kind of like, to a circus person, ‘What do you think about having the roller coaster next to the ferris wheel?’…it’s the occasion of these two things together—having the chance to be at the this festival and see the museum, be a part of the event at the museum. It’s the kind of thing you make time for in your schedule, if you have the time to do something as neat as that. It’s the kind of place that you would come in from a long distance for. There will be some things going on there that wouldn’t be going on anywhere else because of the museum focus.”
Doc Watson
A film festival will feature videos from the museums’ own oral history project, while a new Rounder Records exhibit and panel discussion will illuminate the history and influence of this important roots label.
This year, IBMA executive director Dan Hays will unveil plaques for The Dillards and The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, this year’s inductees to the IBMA Hall of Fame, which is housed at the museum.
There will also be the third annual Legends Supper and Recognition Ceremony, which individually honors pioneering bluegrass musicians on stage. Festival goers can attend the supper for an additional advance-purchase ticket.
This year’s gathering is especially exciting, as it features the largest reunion of Blue Grass Boys to date. As Gray described to me, “It’s going to be gorgeous this year, really really fine. David Holt is the master of ceremonies for the event. Then it will all be followed by a performance by Doc Watson, David Holt and Richard Watson. So that will be a fun night for sure. It’s not really what you’d call formal, although a lot of people wear formal [for the supper portion]. It’s just celebratory. ‘This is your wonderful life and we appreciate all that you did for this music. Because your music makes our lives much happier than they would be without it.’”
Recognizing these pioneers is vital, as Gray explains that “the thing that is very important is these people are not going to be with us forever. In fact, they’re not going to be with us very long. So if you have an interest in seeing how bluegrass began—hearing the authentic first sounds, how it was played way back when—they really need to do that soon and support the festivals that have the first generation players performing,” Gray says.
“Then, to have dozens of them in one place at one time? It’s really quite astonishing. And to hear the stories, my god, it’s just drop dead fabulous and hilarious! You just roll on the floor, they’re so funny!”
Another noteworthy event, being put together in conjunction with the Bill Monroe centennial celebration (which officially kicks off September 13th and lasts for a full two years), is a juried art exhibit. Fans can submit works based on Bill Monroe songs, and then a jury will select 80 works of art. When I spoke to Gray, she was in the process of going through the submissions, as she described the mountain of artwork in her office.
“They’re wonderful!” she said excitedly. “It’s just going to be an incredible exhibit. Some of [the paintings] are gigantic too.”
An audio tour will accompany the exhibit for visitors to the Museum. “When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex went out of business in New York City last month, we went up there and bought what’s called an audio guide tour,” Gray explains.
“So we’re going to program this to where, when you get within three feet of a painting, it will play the song. Bill will be singing, and you’ll see the lyrics posted beside the painting. Then you can go to another part, and on to the next song. So that’s going to be totally fun!”
This exhibit will be running at the IBMM alongside others planned for the centennial, such as a Blue Grass Boys exhibit, and the premiere of a Bill Monroe documentary, as told through the stories of the Blue Grass Boys. The individual interviews have been gathered, but, “we’re going to interview them en masse when they’re at ROMP,” Gray says. “There’s like 78 of them coming. It’s going to be a huge number of people that played with Bill Monroe.”
Wernick is also running one of his inspiring jam camps, which begins on June 21st, three days before the main events of the festival. “[This festival] is already in gear on Wednesday, and the first performing starts on Thursday. So the camp and the festival overlap a little bit. That way the people can come for one, and when the teaching is over they can stay for the festival and probably get in quite a bit of jamming just on their own momentum from being at the camp,” he says.
Wernick's Jam Camp at Merlefest 2004
“The camp for some people is a sporty kind of chance to just play music for a few days,” Wernick reflects. “But it’s really designed for people who are not yet really familiar with [jamming] or have not really done it at all.”
“So we like to encourage people that they hardly have to know anything to get started, that it really just works if everybody follows the rules. So we even get people who are just a week or two into playing. They can really start playing and being part of a jam session. That’s our idea, that we’re trying to get all the unused instruments of the world back into use, because people started playing them and then gave them up. We’re on a campaign to get them all used again, and that’s what we’ll be doing at the museum for two or three days.”
Where the future meets the past
When the IBMA and their Fanfest moved from Owensboro to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1996, and then to Nashville in 2004, the people of Owensboro wanted another local event that would continue to celebrate the bluegrass musical legacy, Gray says. “There are lots of loyalty factors. Most folks in Kentucky feel very protective and parental towards IBMA. When they left, that left the museum as the foremost anchor of bluegrass in its home state. So we really had to scramble to make things sustainable here,” Gray continues.
“This is our official state music, clogging is the official state dance, ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ is the official state song. There’s this huge heritage here, and [Owensboro is] right next door to Ohio County and the Bill Monore Homeplace, so there’s a lot of heritage involved, and some pride too, but it’s mostly affection.”
There was also the need for the IBMM to create a signature event. With these two factors driving it, the first ROMP was held at the museum in 2004.
The museum serves a valuable purpose beyond being a mere tourist attraction. Mandolin player and guitarist Ernie Evans (Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike) runs a benefit concert series for the IBMM. He says he was awestruck the first time he visited the Museum in person.
Bill Monroe display at the IBMM
“Looking back at that experience, I recall standing in the lobby of IBMM with my wife Debi saying, ‘Oh my God, look at this place!’ It gave you the feeling that being part of bluegrass was something special. By that I mean the detail and class with which the museum presents bluegrass is not something you see every day in [regards to] a genre of music, unless it is mainstream. We looked at each other after completing the tour and I said, ‘All of the musicians and industry people would have to be so proud to wind up with some of their artifacts in here, and consider it such an honor.’”
“The museum creates a new opportunity for musicians to share their legacy for future generations without competition,” Evans continues. “You don’t have to break records in sales or depend on media hype to be inducted.”
Wernick, who was president of the IBMA when the museum was first conceived, agrees. “Though basically [bluegrass music is] doing well, you have to stay the course. Sometimes early things get forgotten, formative things that were going on and not many people were there to witness it.”
“When it gets a little more popular, people are thinking mostly of the present. But the present is built very much on the past, in both America and in bluegrass. [There are] cautious steps into the future, [the music is] always moving, but it’s not just getting caught up in the latest fad,” he says.
“That means the museum is all the more important because it means that people that have a sincere interest in learning what the past was like and what the formative years of bluegrass were like—the people, who they were and what they did—it really enriches the present and the future to have the past come alive,”Wernick explains. ”The museum is where the future meets the past. Kids come to see people that maybe they’re going to follow in the footsteps of.”
“There was a ‘Valley Forge time,’ you could call it, in the history of bluegrass music when the going was not so easy, and it was a long road to travel and there was a lot of work to do,” Wernick continues. “That era has mostly passed, but we have our forefather in bluegrass to look back to and salute, and that’s what the Hall of Fame is about particularly, and the whole museum. It’s all about that. These are the people whose shoulders we’re standing on.”
This deep sense of appreciation is evident as Gray describes the emotional impacts of seeing so many first generation pioneers at ROMP. “When I’m in the presence of all those first generation bluegrass musicians, I can barely speak without crying. They’re coming in, they’re hugging each other, they’ve got their families and their entourage of favorite people that follow them here,” she says.
“They’ve just got a presence about them, it’s almost impossible to describe…you feel like you’re immersed in, I hate to say glory, but that’s what it feels like. It’s some kind of aura. I’ve never experienced anything like that. I just go around with my heart in my throat for two or three days, I can hardly not cry [laughs]. But at the same time, it’s such a thrill. Your emotions just get ratcheted up to the nth degree. But right when you think you can’t stand it anymore, the current acts come on and it’s like, phew!”
That’s when it’s time to boogie down.
The work of the IBMM is ensuring that this music will continue to be a living, vital entity well into the future. But all the while, it’s going to be a lot of fun too, and ROMP is a rare opportunity to celebrate the total picture of where we’re going and where we’ve been. So while you’re airing out that musty tent, scrubbing down those icky coolers, and tuning up your instruments for campsite picking, you might want to start looking up the best routes to Owensboro. Because this is one party you don’t want to miss!
Continue reading for a schedule and list of bluegrass pioneers attending ROMP…
