New Wintergrass Venue-The Varsity Grill

The Varsity Grill is a large restaurant just 1/2 a block from the Hotel Murano accessible either via
Broadway or Ct. C, which is the alley-like street directly across from the hotel courtyard.
Wintergrass will be using the upstairs space which is complete with a spectacular bar, stage and dance
floor.  It’s large enough to accommodate the dances but apart from the restaurant enough
to be its own thing. You can also get drinks at the upstairs bar and food and drink
downstairs. We’re excited about being there as are the owners and think this is the start of
a new Wintergrass tradition. This new venue will host workshops,national and regional bands and will host both the Friday and Saturday night dances.

Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper

Fiddle fans will not be disappointed when this band takes the stage. Michael Cleveland just won his fifth fiddle player of the year at the 2007 IBMA awards. And the band won Instrumental band of the year. Michael started fiddling at four and was a member of the Bluegrass Youth Allstars at the 1993 IBMA awards. Michael has toured at a young age with Dale Ann Bradley ( current bandmate Jesse Brock also was in Dale Anns band at that time) and then Rhonda Vincent. Jesse Brock on Mandolin also played with Dale Ann and toured with The Lynn Morris Band. Todd Rakestraw has written some great tunes including Gentle River that Alison Krauss recorded on her first album. John Batchelor is self taught banjo player who has been playing for about 5 years. And those of you that have been to Wintergrass before will have seen Marshall Wilborn here before with The Johnson Mountain Boys, The Lynn Morris Band, and Longview.

Michael Cleveland-fiddle, Jesse Brock-mandolin, Todd Rakestraw- guitar, John Mark Batchelor-banjo, Marshall Wilborn-bass

Wintergrass Schedule!!

The Wintergrass 2008 is out! The schedule is now available on the website so start your planning. And as you know that at any festival the schedule might change due to travel arrangements and unforseen problems. There is a new stage this year at the Varsity Grill just up the street from the main festival site The Hotel Murano.

Here is the link for the schedule http://www.acousticsound.org/Wg08Schedule.pdf

Alhambra Valley Band

The Alhambra Valley Band was formed in the Northern California area in 1986. This band has played all the big festivals in the Northern California area and their album “Willow Pass Road” is a great example of hard driving California bluegrass.  Take a look at there website, there is a great section there on the history of this band.

“I had the opportunity to hear the Alhambra Valley Band. was thoroughly impressed with the timin’, the singin’ and the band as a whole; and especially the hard drivin’ rhythm player.” ..James King @ the Bowers Mansion Festival, 8/14/04

“I want to say special congratulations to each member of the Alhambra Valley Band,
headliner for Saturday night….they absolutely stole the hearts of everyone in earshot.
What singing….what playing”
.. Rick Cornish, CBA Chairman of the Board @ the Good Old Fashioned Festival, 7/12/04Lynn Quinones - Songwriter, Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitar • Jill Cruey -Vocals, Fiddle • Dan Large - Vocals, Mandolin • Mitch Polzak - Vocals, Banjo •
Bruce Campbell -Vocals, Bass

Ruthie Foster

Ruthie Foster is going to be participating in this years Wintergrass 2008 part of the Thursday night Black & Bluegrass show that Laura Love is presenting at Wintergrass 2008. This show is going to highlight the influence of black string band music on bluegrass. Ruthie is an amazingly powerful singer coming from a blues, classic early soul and R & B beginning. The combination of Ruthie and Laura will be a highlight for sure. Here are some of the critical acclaim that the reviewers have raved on Ruthie “a songwriter and singer as good as Foster doesn’t fit in genres- She creates her own.”- James Porter, Time Out Chicago

“The album takes its name from ”Phenomenal Woman,’ a Maya Angelou poem set to music by Amy Sky and David Pickell, but Foster’s voice would earn the superlative anyway.”- Shay Quillen, The Mercury News (CA)
Ruthie’s voice with the musicians Laura has lined up will make this a very unique Wintergrass first!

Tune Up for Wintergrass 2008

Tune Up for Wintergrass 2008

Our friends at Festival Preview produced this annotated preview playlist including two tracks by most artists performing at the upcoming festival. Sample each tune or download tracks from the Amazon MP3 store. Each track is annotated with expert commentary from the editors at Festival Preview. 

http://festivalpreviewblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/tune-up-for-wintergrass.html

This is a great site for people looking for festivals and band information of all kinds. The site is set up so you can look at several sub blogs for different genres of music or the main blog. The main blog is http://www.festivalpreview.com/ and the Roots blog is http://www.festivalpreview.com/roots.html This site has lots of current info on bands playing Wintergrass this year and bands that have played here in the past.  This is an essential site for those who travel to music festivals around the country.

Hot Club Sandwich

Hot Club Sandwich takes it’s name and musical style from the famous Quintette Du Hot Club de France. These great Gypsy string band style jazz band from the Seattle area are going to be playing a dance set and a concert set at Wintergrass 2008. This style of string band jazz influenced many of the early bluegrass musicians and is having a resurgence in the past few years. A great tribute to these early string bands but certainly not a time piece of a band. Their latest cd “Green Room” has landed at #11 on the CMJ Jazz charts. Check out there website and listen to their clips but don’t forget to check out their mighty fine hats!

Ray Wood-guitar, Kevin Connor-guitar, Greg Ruby-guitar, James Schneider-bass, Matt Sircely-mandolin,Tim Wetmiller-violin

The Duhks

The Duhks return to Wintergrass 2008 and will be playing a couple of sets this year. One of sets will be a great Saturday night dance! The Duhks who are based out of Canada just last month won a Canadian Folk Music Award for “Best Album - Contemporary” for their Sugar Hill Records release “Migrations” . The Duhks are a pretty unique band, there music is described as a Duhks-alone blend of soul, gospel, North American folk, Brazilian samba, old time country string band, zydeco, and Irish dance music. Perfect for an acoustic dance! Great fiddling, banjo and add some powerful vocals!

Tania Elizabeth -fiddle, Jordan McConnell – guitar, Leonard Podolak – banjo, Scott Senior – percussion,  Sarah Dugas- vocals

Mark Johnson & Emory Lester

Two of the best instrumentalists in bluegrass will be back at Wintergrass 2008. Mark & Emory’s latest album Acoustic Rising on the Mountain Home label was nominated for the IBMA Instrumental Album of the Year. Mark plays a unique blend of clawhammer banjo in a bluegrass style and Emory plays the mandolin based in bluegrass with new age and jazz influences. Working has a duo has given these two plenty of room for unique arrangements to compliment their unique styles.

Mark Johnson-banjo, Emory Lester-mandolin and guitar 

Wintergrass Online Group

Wintergrass has started a new online email list so people can meet-up and plan their Wintergrass music, rides and jam sessions. Here is the info on the group:

This email list is a forum for people to find roomates, rides, musicians to jam with, classifieds for music items for sale and other misc. items pertaining to the Wintergrass Festival held in February. This is the home page for the group http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Wintergrass/