Bluegrass music's royal family to headline Rhythm & Roots Reunion

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Doyle Lawson has played music around the world, but always looks forward to taking the stage in his adopted hometown.

He’ll have that opportunity come September, as one of the headline acts of the 10th annual Rhythm & Roots Reunion. The music festival will unfold Sept. 17-19 in the Twin City’s downtown.

On Tuesday, organizers announced part of the lineup and unveiled the 10th annual poster during a news conference at Theatre Bristol.

“I’ve been everywhere, but there is something about coming to Bristol – it’s just the great heritage we have here. There’s a special feeling to it and I’m proud of our heritage,” Lawson said.

He and his band, Quicksilver, are scheduled to perform Sunday afternoon at the festival, which pays homage to the Twin City’s role in the popularity of country and bluegrass music.

A Sullivan County native, Lawson moved to the Twin City in 1984.

“I’ve played bluegrass all my life, ever since I was old enough to pick up an instrument,” Lawson said. “But I really like all kinds of music. I don’t like noise. And I hear music when I come to this festival, not noise.”

Also joining in the anniversary celebration will be Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, the Del McCoury Band, Blue Highway, Dale Ann Bradley, Cadillac Sky, Darrell Scott, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Infamous Stringdusters and about 50 more announced Tuesday.

“Our music committee is still working to finalize booking some more big-name artists and we hope to have that finalized in the next few weeks,” festival Executive Director Leah Ross said.

In the decade since it was established, Rhythm & Roots has met or exceeded the expectations of its founders.

“This is how we dreamed it would be,” Ross said. “But it never would have happened without the buy-in of the community. People have taken ownership of this festival, they plan schedules around it. Kids who grew up attending it come back from college and bring their friends because they’re proud of it.”

Last year’s event attracted about 31,500 people from 35 states and six foreign countries, said Ross, who was also part of the founding group.

Ross said a good indication of how much the festival has grown is having a musician the caliber of Skaggs – a 14-time Grammy-Award winner and recipient of more than 60 other major music awards – asking to perform here.

“He contacted his booking agent and told him he wanted to play this festival. That’s very exciting,” Ross said.

David Shumaker agreed. In addition to being a longtime member of the Bristol Tennessee City Council, Shumaker is chairman of the 2010 festival and was one of its original proponents.

“This is what we hoped it would be,” he said. “We were building the stage down there at the [country music] mural and thought, we’ve got all these stages, we could do a music festival,” Shumaker said. “We first got $25,000 seed money from Bristol, Va. I shamed our council into also giving $25,000 and King Pharmaceuticals gave us $25,000. That was the budget for the first festival and now we’re at 10 times that.”

Building the festival was sometimes an “uphill battle,” Shumaker said, because its predecessors, the Autumn Chase festival and Race Fest, failed to attract large crowds.

“This is our festival,” he said of Twin City residents.

The news conference even included a couple of good-natured jabs at Music City.

“Here in Bristol is where country music was born and it died in Nashville,” Ross said, when talking about performer Larry Cordle’s song “Murder on Music Row,” which was a hit for Alan Jackson.

Cordle is scheduled to perform at this year’s festival.

Lawson also got into the act.

“People ask me why I didn’t move to Nashville, since I’m so close. I tell them I’m as close to Nashville as I want to be,” Lawson said, drawing applause from the nearly 40 people in attendance.

Internationally recognized artist and animator Charles Vess, who has attended all nine previous festivals, designed this year’s poster.

“This festival is beautiful. I’ve come every single year and the level of musicianship – from the really well known to people playing in an alley just because they had to play – really makes me happy. So the idea for the poster was the dancing buildings with hillbilly angels of Bill Monroe, the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers,” said Vess, an Abingdon resident.

The Country Music Hall of Fame careers of the Carters and Rodgers began with their recordings at the 1927 Bristol Sessions, regarded as the spark that ignited commercial country music.

Monroe, known as the “father of bluegrass music,” was a frequent performer on the Farm & Fun Time radio broadcast in Bristol in the 1950s.

Through June 30, tickets for this year’s festival are now on sale for $35 for an adult weekend pass. The price will increase to $40 on July 1. A different 10th anniversary poster will be available only to weekend ticket-buyers, Ross said.

Tickets for individual days are priced at $25 for Friday, $30 for Saturday and $15 for Sunday.

dmcgee@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2532