Explosive acoustic guitar solos. Hard-driving banjo picking. Powerful fiddle playing. Lightning-fast mandolin licks. Intense, high harmonies. And lead singers with a lonesome ache in their voice. These are some of the hallmarks of the American-made music known as bluegrass. Born in the hills and hollers of the Appalachian Mountains, the genre has influenced countless popular musicians, from The Grateful Deadโs Jerry Garcia to Led Zeppelinโs Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.
Bluegrass musicโs roots are planted in Evansvilleโs back, and front, yards. Rosine, Kentucky, 40 miles south of Owensboro, is the birthplace of Bill Monroe, considered the father of bluegrass. Monroe moved to Brown County, Indiana, at 18 and later developed โBill Monroeโs Music Park and Campgroundโ in Bean Blossom, Indiana. On that site, in 1967, he founded the very first multi-day bluegrass festival โ Bill Monroeโs Bluegrass Festival, an event still taking place each June.
How great is bluegrass musicโs impact on the region? We asked these folks who are at the forefront of the genre.
Terry Woodward, executive committee member at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and founding organizer of ROMP, the nationโs premier bluegrass festival held each June in Owensboro
EL: Owensboro has been called the center of bluegrass music. How did that distinction come about?
TW: Back in the 1980s, I was on the board of the Owensboro Tourism Commission. We were studying the things that make our city unique. I presented the idea that we are the nearest bigger city to Rosine, Kentucky, where Bill Monroe was born. I thought we should celebrate the origin of bluegrass music here in Owensboro. The idea was well received, so we created the IBMA โ the International Bluegrass Music Association, which years later relocated to Nashville, Tennessee. Next, we broke ground for the bluegrass museum, and about a decade later, we added ROMP as a fundraising element for the museum. I was involved in creating all three.
Chris Joslin, outgoing Executive Director of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum
EL: Talk about some of the ways the museum gets youth excited about bluegrass music.
CJ: We are a music-centric, nonprofit organization intentional about presenting bluegrass music to the community and to the world. We offer educational programs, both in group settings and with individual lessons, on various instruments: banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle โฆ we even offer dance. There are special curricula for kids, arts and crafts workshops, and a big part of our recruitment comes during ROMP with our Kids Zone. We take a holistic approach to building connections within our groups, fostering friendships among students, and encouraging them to take those musical relationships further. Some of the students actually form bluegrass bands. The fruition of this vision can be seen with The Bluegrass Brothers, a trio of young musicians, all multi-instrumentalists, who have come up through our program. These kids are getting booked to play professionally.
We also provide opportunities for students to play in the community: our student showcase at ROMP, our Jingle Jam during the holidays, and our students perform at nursing homes, in hospital lobbies, and at other places in the community where people gather. The best place to learn about what we do is on our website: bluegrasshall.org.
Erinn Williams, teacher, Eastern Kentucky native, Owensboro resident, and facilitator of Kids Zone at ROMP
EL: How does Owensboro fit into this resurgence of bluegrass music today?
EW: What Owensboro does well is provide cultural awareness of Appalachian music to people from all over the world. It makes us [Eastern Kentuckians] appreciate where we come from and excited about where the genre is going.
