Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Danby Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival


Yesterday was a beautiful summer day, actually one of the first hot sun, blue sky, put your shorts on, summer days of the season and I took advantage of it to go to the Danby Bluegrass Festival with some friends. Will and his Goldtown group, were playing with some other friends as The Johnny Davis Band so it was an easy decision to hop in the car and go. Compared to the other acts, they were definitely the youngest, but they ripped through a number of bluegrass standards and some of their own stuff and were well received by the crowd. I know they had a good time too ... The site was picture perfect, the other performers were real fine and it was just a great afternoon .... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

I got there in time to see Smokey Greene sing that 70's classic, "Drop Kick Me Jesus Through The Goal Posts of Life" ... I last saw him do that locally in the 70's before we both quit the bar scene. I missed a great photo op of a small group of line dancers doing the dkmjttgpol line dance ... quite the sight. Smokey closed his set with about 20 people on stage helping him sing some classic standard, though I can't remember which one it was.

Next up was Will and his friends doing their stuff...

Will, getting down some good banjo licks ...

Acoustic Blue ... Classic standards and gospel, with Smokey helping them out..

the crowd

The last set I caught was by Junior Barber and his friends from Platsburgh, New York.
Junior as a dobro player is right up there with Jerry Douglas imho, and it was great to see them perform. I'm sure the group after them was great but we had the 'Lilly ' party to go to, where there was an acre of blooming daylillies, an acre of friends, a 1/2 acrre of pot luck food, and about a half hour of professional quality fireworks. It's an annual event for at least the last ten years and never fails to be great. Had I checked my email before bed I would have found an order for one of our fanciest pool tables. Today I feel like I went through the 'goal posts' for the winning point.

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