John Hartford Memorial Festival: For the Love of the Music
It will be a decade this June since John Hartford passed away, but his legacy lives on. An exciting testament to this will take place June 1st through June 4th, as the beautiful and historic Bill Monroe Memorial Park and Campground plays host to the first ever John Hartford Memorial Festival.
From those who played with him and knew him personally, to young bands that point to Hartford as an inspiration, the lineup draws on a wide spectrum of acts in the bluegrass and acoustic Americana music scene. Artists include Tim O’Brien, Danny Barnes, Great American Taxi, Tut Taylor, Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen, Rodney Dillard & the Dillard Band, Larry Keel & Natural Bridge, Jamie Hartford, The Missouri Boatride Bluegrass Band, Greensky Bluegrass, Infamous Stringdusters, Henhouse Prowlers, The HillBenders – and that’s just for starters.
The incredibly wallet-friendly price of $75 for an advance full festival pass (note: camping not included, must be booked through Bean Blossom) also includes a special kick-off picking party and chili supper on Wednesday evening. Besides the stellar main stage line-up, the second stage will feature workshops, smaller acts and open picking sessions.
To say that the event is a multi-generational labor of love is no exaggeration. The two organizers – John Hotze and Dan Dillman– are 70 and 24 years old, respectively. They met through their mutual connection to Bean Blossom. Dan is the son of Dwight Dillman, the owner of the park, and Hotze has been a frequent attendee at festivals there. The connection between the two men grew over a shared love of music, and, a little over a year ago, they hatched a scheme.
“I started talking about the need to put together a John Hartford Memorial Festival, here at [Bean Blossom],” Hotze describes. “Dan approached his dad, and his dad said, ‘Go for it.’ I think his dad really didn’t think anything would happen. Dan is pretty young and hasn’t done a whole lot [like this before] so he thought it was going to die on the vine. But we really pushed to get it together.”
When putting the lineup together, Hotze’s traditional bluegrass background complimented Dillman’s enthusiasm for new progressive acts nicely. “We were on opposite sides of the table with the bluegrass thing, him being into jamgrass, and me being more into traditional bluegrass,” Hotze explains. “So we wound up with a compilation of bands with a really good variety of music.”
Celebrating an Artistic Legacy
With the luminaries, up-and-comers, and innovators represented on the bill, the on-the-fly collaborations and sit-ins will surely lead to some unforgettable musical moments onstage at Bean Blossom. Since all the artists are there, ultimately, to honor Hartford, a sense of celebration is already palpable amongst the musicians who will be in attendance.
“I can’t wait to get to the first Hartford Fest, because the type of folks who honor John are the kind of folks I want to hang out with,” says Vince Herman (Great American Taxi, Leftover Salmon). “I think it’s about time a multi-day festival was held in his honor so that the depth of his catalog can be pulled out at campfires, so that kids can learn his tunes at this festival for years to come – and so someone can make some really cool t-shirts. Bean Blossom is the ideal location for this to happen, given John’s deep respect for all things Bill Monroe. Having never been there myself, I’m chomping at the bit to get there.”
Bassist Larry Sifford, of The Missouri Boatride Bluegrass Band, echoes that sentiment.
“We felt John was deserving of a memorial event,” he reflects. “There are many songwriters and musicians but none in my book were able to capture the unique and almost mystical legacy John left.”
Herman also comments on Hartford’s influence as a songwriter, describing Hartford as his, “Favorite 20th century writer, and he’s heading up the 21st so far [for me].”
“His deep love of roots music was clear even in his L.A. psychedelic early works. His ‘word movie’ style of writing never failed to deliver on record, and his songs opened the gates to bringing the crowd along with him during his live shows. I have never seen a performer with such control of a crowd. His immense presence was part of that, but his songs sealed the deal.”
Besides being a magnetic performer, Hartford was also an iconoclast. Danny Barnes, a persistently innovative artist himself, learned a great deal from Hartford. His first “concert proper,” as he describes it, was seeing John Hartford at Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, sometime in the 70s. He remembered being impressed at how a musician could make music that was so utterly contemporary and relevant to what was happening in the here and now, while still having obviously done his homework in traditional forms. When he befriended Hartford later in his life, he gained insight into his approach.
“One thing [Hartford] told me was that, if a person really wanted to be like Bill Monroe, they should go out and start their own style of music, rather than mechanically play and repeat what Bill played,” Barnes explains. “Folks were copying the wrong part of Monroe’s work. In a sense, to me, that’s John’s legacy. People associate him with the hat and the dancing and the shtick, as it were, and that’s all cool and a part of him. But I think that observation that he had could totally change acoustic music, or picking music, or whatever you call this stuff. I feel like I have been working very hard to keep that written down, on a piece of butcher paper on the wall of the woodshed of my mind. In a sense, I have devoted my whole professional life to this ethos. He was the first that codified it for me in such a succinct way.”
But to Hotze, Hartford was, “Just a nice warm friend I had in high school.”
Hotze and his friend Paul Breidenbach, who played guitar with Hartford in one of his early bands, The Missouri Ridgerunners, were making frequent Greyhound bus trips from St. Louis to Nashville as young teenagers in the mid 1950s to catch shows at the Grand Ole Opry. It was on one of these trips that they met Hartford, who was three years older. They quickly bonded over a shared love of bluegrass music, and discovered that Hartford also lived in St. Louis. They would then get together a few times a month, sometimes making trips down to Nashville together.
“He was addicted to bluegrass music,” Hotze recalls. “I happened to have a reel-to-reel recorder and I was recording the Grand Ole Opry back in, probably starting in ’55, and I specifically recorded mostly bluegrass, Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs, so when we’d get together, John would always want to know, ‘What do you have that’s new? What did Flatt and Scruggs do?’ So I shared the music and I helped him learn some new stuff.”
“John was just a normal guy back then. I’m amazed at everything he did in his career. He was just one of us, but, well, he was exceptional.”
A Part of History
For bluegrass fans, there could be no better setting than the Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park & Campground in Bean Blossom. Over 55 years of musical history have taken place on these hallowed grounds, nestled in the rolling hills of Brown County, Indiana. Monroe fell in love with the park after playing a jamboree there in October 1951, purchasing the land two months later. The first bluegrass festival was held here in 1967, and since then countless legends have graced the stage and picked in the campgrounds. “To most artists who know what Bean Blossom is, it’s a privilege to get to go there and perform,” Hotze says.
It’s an environment that also brings out the welcoming, friendly side of its attendees. “You might have a physicist, a doctor, a farmer, or a blue collar worker, but the barriers are completely down when you are in the campgrounds,” Hotze describes. “It’s a very warm feeling. I’ve been to several festivals, and there’s been no other park that has had the cozy, comfy feeling that Bean Blossom has. You don’t feel like you’re in a huge crowd at Bean Blossom, even though there could be a couple thousand people easily.”
Hotze’s love for the venue comes from a fan’s perspective. He has many stories of his adventures in the campgrounds at Bean Blossom, falling asleep listening to the late night picks from tent, or staying out until 8am taking in the nonstop music, meeting friends old and new. With the John Hartford Memorial festival, he is hoping that attendees will have their own memories and stories to take with them when the event is over.
“Its my dream that, after the festival the fans leave and say, ‘That was really neat, I hope there’s going to be more,’” he says. “I want the artists to feel, ‘We had a lot of fun, I hope that we can come back and do it again.’ That’s what I gage as successful. I’d like to see it become an annual John Hartford Memorial Festival.”
It’s a tough economic environment for the music industry, and, even in stronger financial times, most festivals in their first year rarely manage to break even, much less turn any sort of profit. Although money and logistical concerns have certainly provided their share of curveballs in the past year for Hotze and Dillman, their motivations for putting on the festival have always remained in the forefront.
“It is to do something to honor John,” Hotze says, summing it up.
Tickets to the John Hartford Memorial Festival are available here. The SPPS will be on site, taping all the performances.
