Bluegrass In Upstate New York - Article

[journeybear]

Interesting article.

I know MY first major exposure to bluegrass was at Winterhawk, back in ... I forget.

[allenhopkins]

I started playing bluegrass in Rochester in 1970, with a trio called the Flower City Ramblers. There was already another active group there, Blue Ridge Country Ramblers, who recently celebrated their 50th anniversary with at least one original member, banjoist Jerry Schneider.

Bristol Mountain Bluegrass also started playing at the Bristol Mountain ski resort around 1978, and is still active, with founder Don Springer assembling a new crew of musicians. Going west toward Buffalo, Creek Bend is another group with over 30 years of performing.

I would quarrel a bit with the article's linking the rural environment of central NY with a taste for bluegrass. Some of the most influential area bands, such as Ithaca's Country Cooking, Syracuse's Down City Ramblers and the all-female Buffalo Gals, Rochster's Grey Eagle et. al. were composed of college kids who picked up bluegrass during the '60's folk revival -- which is where I got started doing it, listening to people like the Greenbriar Boys and Osborne Brothers in Cambridge coffeehouses. Undoubtedly a large part of the audience may consist of people from the farming communities of the Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier, but much of the impetus came from younger musicians who weren't rural, just loved the music.

Look at bands coming out of "downstate," New York City, such as the New York Ramblers with David Grisman and Jody Stecher. No rural connection there, just an appreciation for bluegrass music. I'd venture that audiences for Yonder Mountain and Old Crow concerts in upstate consist very largely of younger fans of "roots," "Americana," whatever you want to call it.

There is a very lively music scene in upstate, not just bluegrass. This month I'll be helping run the Genesee Country Village Fiddlers' Fair, which I've helped coordinate since 1981, and which will draw thousands of spectators and over 100 fiddlers. (If you scroll down to the fourth pic, I'm the hefty guy with the Strad-O-Lin; lost some weight since then, fortunately…) The Fiddlers' Hall of Fame in Osceola is a center for traditional Northeastern old-time and dance music. There is a very active Irish/Celtic music network, with frequent seisuns, dance ceilidhs, and concerts. Several cities have active country dance organizations, with frequent dances to live music. And in terms of folk music, clubs like Buffalo Friends of Folk Music, Rochester's Golden Link, Valley Folk in the Southern Tier, Cornell Folk Song Club, and others have been in existence for decades.

Upstate sometimes gets labeled "cow country," as Bill Nunn called it in The Last Seduction. Lots of agriculture up here, for sure, but much of the bluegrass got generated from thriving folk music scenes around upstate colleges. At least that was my experience.

[journeybear]

I agree with you about that point tying the popularity (such as it is) of bluegrass in the region to its rural nature. People like what they like regardless of their immediate environment. Look at the major revivalist jug bands of the mid-1960s. They were based in urban centers - New York, Boston, Bay Area - and it hardly gets more rural than jug band music. If the point the author is making is true, then upstate NY should also be a hot bed of activity for country music, too. But I don't know - is it?

I recall being surprised when my friends told me they were going to a bluegrass festival in upstate New York and insisted I join them, this being the early 1980s. I didn't know much about bluegrass, despite having been playing mandolin for some fifteen years, and having written two bluegrass numbers (one song and one breakdown, a total which hasn't changed since (I figured I had the genre covered)). I'd even had some sort of bluegrass-oriented band in college. But I had heard very little bluegrass, growing up in southern New England. I guess I was surprised mostly that there was a festival way up north. Someone theorized that fans lived all over, and there was a market for the music in the area, as well as not much competition. So off I went, had a great time camping and picking and listening, and continued going for over a decade.

[Backlineman]

I grew up in the Elmira / Corning area (southern finger lakes region), and remember being exposed to bluegrass as a teenager in the early to mid 1970's. I have pretty a vivid memory of regular stops at a roadhouse type bar/pizza place on route 13 near Ithaca that featured bluegrass regularly. We would stop there on the way home after a day of skiing at a mountain called Greek Peek, which also had bluegrass groups play in the tavern in the ski lodge. I associate my earliest memories of bluegrass with ski areas for some reason. Interesting that the Bristol Mountain Bluegrass was mentioned. I remember that ski area well. I also remember seeing bluegrass bands at a bar called Wet Goods on Market street in Corning. Seems like there's a fairly well established bluegrass history in the "southern tier" area of New York State.

[Dave Hicks]

I got exposed to oldtime music (and some BG) as a grad student at Cornell in the late 70's, thanks to the Highwoods String Band, Fiction Brothers and a bunch of others.

D.H.

[Russ Donahue]

My first experience with Bluegrass was in 1974 at a Ramble on a farm in Cato/Meridian, New York. Cato's not far from Lake Ontario, and about 40 minutes from Syracuse. As I recall, the Syracuse public radio station WCNY had a guy who hosted a weekly radio show and was also the promoter of the Ramble. Went with a bunch of my musical friends and had a great day in the sun listening to cool music and sounds that were new to all of us. That was also my first real exposure to mandolin. Not long after I bought an Aria A that was so horribly set up I gave up on the instrument for a few years. Wish I still had it as a beater, though, since I now know what to do with the thing. Upstate music scene just ruled from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s. All kinds of great music was just jumping out of the ground and off the stages then - from Buffalo, to Ithaca, to Syracuse and Utica.

[Russ Donahue]

Okay. Just read the article. That WAS the place I discovered bluegrass...and at his second festival. Cool! Thanks for sharing it and filling in a few gaps for me.

[Dennis Satterlee]

There was a fiddler's picnic each year at Hemlock Lake ( south of Rochester, NY ) that my uncle attended back in the 1950s. I believe it had been in existence before WWII. I started going myself in the early 1960s and there was quite a bit of bluegrass music even back then.

[Russ Donahue]

Went to SUNY Geneseo for some time and knew Hemlock Lake...didn't know there was a bluegrass festival there. Would have been fun.

[allenhopkins]

There was a fiddler's picnic each year at Hemlock Lake ( south of Rochester, NY ) that my uncle attended back in the 1950s. I believe it had been in existence before WWII. I started going myself in the early 1960s and there was quite a bit of bluegrass music even back then.

The Old Fiddlers' Picnic at Hemlock Lake was largely organized, think in the 1930's, by Alvah Reed, local banjo player and square dance musician. I went to school with Sharleen Reed, who I think was Alvah's granddaughter or great-niece. It was held at the north end of Hemlock Lake, in a park that was actually owned by the City of Rochester, since Hemlock and Canadice Lakes are Rochester's "upland watershed," and are owned by the City and used as reservoirs. As a result, there is very little development around these, two of the smallest Finger Lakes.

In the 1970's the Picnic was drawing bigger crowds, and exceeding the capacity of the little Hemlock Lake park (one bathroom facility, etc.). The City withdrew its permission to use the park, and the loose committee that "organized" the event moved it to the Wayne County Fairgrounds in Palmyra, east of Rochester. By this time it had turned into a country-western jamboree, with a number of "bar bands" playing, and precious few fiddlers to be found. The Old Fiddlers Picnic petered out in the early 1980's.

At that point, I was asked to help organize an Old-Time Fiddlers' Fair at the Genesee Country Village "restoration" west of Rochester (I've been doing historical music at GCV since 1976). The event's been held every August since, and draws several thousand spectators and at least 100 fiddlers and back-up musicians. There's an open stage sign-up for fiddlers, a stage for bands and fiddle clubs, another for newer and younger fiddlers, and a series of workshops and presentations on fiddle music traditions. Plus a ton of jamming.

However, it is not a bluegrass event, though there's some bluegrass fiddling, as well as Celtic, old-time, and just standard Northeastern dance music. The original Old Fiddlers Picnic was a lot more about traditional country, and square-dance style fiddle music, than it was about bluegrass, though some did get played there. The originators were musicians who played Saturday night Grange Hall dances, and that was sort of the theme that ran through it -- until the country-western bands took it over.

[Russ Donahue]

Wish I still lived in the area....sounds like one heckuva time. The Country Village is a nice place and must be a fun setting for the Fiddler's Fair. Son number one is starting at Hobart in Geneva this fall, so I'm hoping to be spending more time in the old stomping grounds...

[chuck3]

Nice article and thread. Our youngest is a grad student at Syracuse now after spending 6 years in Ithaca, and whaddya know ... he acquired a strong liking for bluegrass along the way.

[High Lonesome Valley]

I would quarrel a bit with the article's linking the rural environment of central NY with a taste for bluegrass. Some of the most influential area bands, such as Ithaca's Country Cooking, Syracuse's Down City Ramblers and the all-female Buffalo Gals, Rochster's Grey Eagle et. al. were composed of college kids who picked up bluegrass during the '60's folk revival -- which is where I got started doing it, listening to people like the Greenbriar Boys and Osborne Brothers in Cambridge coffeehouses. Undoubtedly a large part of the audience may consist of people from the farming communities of the Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier, but much of the impetus came from younger musicians who weren't rural, just loved the music.

The author a geocentric transplant from NYC, to be sure.

The "Bluegrass Belt" starts in the southeastern U.S, up the coast and inland several hundred miles, through southern NJ (my birthplace), up through PA/NY, makes a left turn toward Michigan, on up into Canada. Dang me, the first time I saw a Canadian Bluegrass band. Lest we forget, the thriving Bluegrass scene on the other side of the pond.

Many of the people who play Bluegrass, whether rural folk or not, go up to "the big city" to buy their instruments. City music stores sure do like Bluegrass players because we're willing to rob the kitty for a quality instrument.

And y'all hillbillies, from blue collar workers, farmers, engineers and college professors, sure do likes it when them all do sell us that there guit fiddles, mountain fiddles, banjers, manderlins, and dog house basses.

[allenhopkins]

The author a geocentric transplant from NYC, to be sure.

Not sure, High Lonesome, whether you're saying you're from NYCity, or implying that I am…

…Which I'm not. Born in Durham NC, grew up in Canadice NY (Ontario County), went to college in Cambridge MA, spent two Army years in Colorado Springs, lived in Rochester for the last 47 years.

Learned about bluegrass going to Club 47 in Harvard Square, and heard it played by "authentic" Southern pickers, and by Ivy League grad students. Difference was the Ivy Leaguers did fewer gospel songs.

In my experience -- which I wouldn't universalize -- the upstate New York bluegrass musicians I've met have largely been "citybillies" who just love the style. Their audiences have been more rural, I guess, since the ongoing bluegrass jams and clubs I've known have tended to be located in smaller towns outside the larger upstate cities. Central NY Bluegrass Association, which has been going for 40 years or more, meets in small towns like Lafayette and Phoenix (NY), though both easily interstate-accessible from Syracuse.

[Russ Donahue]

The "Bluegrass Belt" starts in the southeastern U.S, up the coast and inland several hundred miles, through southern NJ (my birthplace), up through PA/NY, makes a left turn toward Michigan, on up into Canada. Dang me, the first time I saw a Canadian Bluegrass band.

Where does that leave Maine in the equation? It would be a shame to leave Roland White (who is from Maine) and his siblings out of the mix...

[William Smith]

My Gramps Big Bill Smith and his brother Uncle Dick Smith started off pickin in the late 50's in upstate NY along with the Bartletts and the Johnson Bros. Gene the younger Johnson bro went on to marry Gramps daughter and then went on to play with some Grass Greats, now of Country music fame Diamond Rio. UncleDick is also well know all over the world and I'm sure some pf you all know him. Lots of other greats came out of the north as well.