Bluegrass Music Festival

Let me start from the beginning because I just realized I haven't really blogged about this gigantic event. So I received a call on March 7 asking if I would be chairperson of the bluegrass fundraiser festival. The details that I received that day were as follows:
1. I would work with another person (that person had not been ask yet).
2. That person and I would set up 5 committees to implement the plan that we would come up with.
3. Those 5 committees would have a chairperson each and we would be over those people.
4. The 5 committees would be Food, Publicity, Grounds, Volunteers, and Entertainment.

So what did I say? Of course, I said yes. I did not know at that time what I was getting into.

My partner ended up being a girl named Shannon with which I had only had a little contact. It was a perfect match. We worked for weeks trying to get everything together. The committees didn't work out that well. We had several people tell us they were going to head up committees or take care of things that never was completed. So we just started hacking through ourselves. Another girl, Kerri, came on in the last 2 weeks and between the three of us this is the result.

The pictures you are about to see were taken by a bluegrass friend, Jeff Catlin. He is a wonderful photographer and you can go here and see more of his awesome pictures.
The festival was supposed to be at a place called Willow Creek Ranch (outdoors) but it poured for 3 days before the festival. We changed the location to a huge barn in our local state park (which is only a mile from my house. It is called Table Rock State Park and the ranger is a friend of ours. This was the entrance to the festival.
This is a picture of the man the festival was named after. It was call the Papa John Foster Memorial Music Festival. He was a big supporter of all our youth learning to play the traditional music of our mountains. He died in June. The poem was written by one of the fiddlers (teenager) and this picture was presented to his family.
This was at the very beginning of the festival. The barn filled up really fast and we figured that we ended up with about 500 people coming in throughout the day.

This is some of the YAMs getting tuned up on the back porch. There was also a funnel cake man in the corner (that is the reason for the tables).I love this picture of Gabe.
This is our group of elementary school YAMs. There is also a smaller group called the YAM band that does all the performance outside our area. Gabe is the band and the even smaller group that they take other places.

A few more pictures of my favorite YAM.
There was also a tribute to two of the instructors, Dan and Normah. The picture that was presented to them was drawn by one of our local art teachers who retired a few years back. You can't tell much about the drawing but it was beautiful.

This little girl, plays the big bass and the guitar and at the moment seems to be Gabe's girlfriend. Although neither of them will admit it. But they won't deny it either.
This was one of the last bands to play and by far my favorite. They are called Tucker's Town (from Hootie and the Blowfish) and were more contemporary. The girl playing the bass is Papa John's granddaughter and she has a beautful voice. I am lookin forward to hearing them again.

We had a very successful day and I was exhausted when I finally made it home. We stayed at the barn for 12 hours on Saturday (this included set up and clean up) but it was well worth it. I haven't heard the final count on how much money we made but I know that it was well over $3000. I finally a bit more rested (after a nap on Monday afternoon) so I'm ready to start planning for next year. More important than the money, was that I made several new friends who will be friends for life (especially Shannon and Kerri.) We are having a big party to celebrate our success on April 19. So there will be more pictures to come.