I had meant to get to this festival for some years; this year Grassroots were booked to play there, and this gave me no real excuse for not going! In fact many people from England, Wales and Scotland – not to mention the Irish Republic – go there regularly and I saw lots of old friends: this is after all one of the biggest and most star-studded bluegrass/old time music events in the British Isles. This year the top act were Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, and their shows were superb; Dave Logan, a special fan and friend of Doyle for many years, reckoned that this is as good as they’ve ever been, and certainly the breadth and quality of the songs and singing just lifted the marquee roof. Another real star act was Bearfoot Bluegrass, a young and meteorically rising act from Alaska – a kind of expanded Nickle Creek, but playing traditional material, and especially featuring twin fiddles. They also ran the workshops for children – themselves having grown out of the teen-age bluegrass camp scene.
The festival was billed as ‘Bluegrass and Appalachian Music’ and the other star US act was The Wilders, a 1940s-style Hill-billy band with a really wild performance style. A wide variety of good European bands were there too: bluegrass fans loved the Roll’s Boys from Czech Republic, led by Zdenek Roh and Ralph Schut. Old-time had a good showing from the Rough Deal String Band, and almost every variety of Appalachian-derived music could be heard somewhere.
I hadn’t appreciated the real nature of the site – difficult until you actually see it! There are original and replica buildings covering a large area, showing the background of the Ulster emigrants, and the kind of places they lived in when they got to Appalachia. And for the festival most of these buildings featured live music – outside when sunny, inside when it rained, which luckily was not so often as the forecast had warned. As well as playing a show on the main marquee stage, Grassroots were based in a church/meeting hall, with a small stage/pulpit half-way down from which we played, and a real peat fire at the end. Outside was a field of linen, illustrating one of Ulster’s main industries, and also a demonstration of peat turf-cutting. We were met each time by Gilly – our liaison officer – who introduced us, found the hired bass when it wasn’t there, and generally made us feel at home. Here I should say that this is probably the best organised bluegrass festival I’ve ever been to though, to be fair to other festivals, it has a flying start in the regular staff who work at the Folk-Park throughout the year.
For any serious fan of bluegrass, old-time or country music this is a place I really do recommend to you go and see at least once in a lifetime. There are truly fascinating displays showing just why people emigrated, and what they had to put up with on the journey, from the local train-station through the port, to the ordeal of final arrival and being vetted by the US Immigration, and then finding a place to stay, and in some cases making the journey across America to California . You will also get an idea of the breadth of contribution made by Ulster people to their new country.
Some data: the marquee holds just over 1000 people, seated in comfort, and the Saturday night concert sold out well in advance (so book early for next year). Around 7000 visitors came to the site over the weekend and (whether they liked it or not) were entertained by 19 bands from 8 countries. This is the festival’s 15th year. What will be on the bill for next year? How can you top such a performance by Doyle Lawson? Well there’s no comment as yet, but I have a great respect for the imagination of organiser Richard Hurst so I for one will be watching www.folkpark.com.
Omagh Picture Gallery : please click on to any of the following pictures to enlarge