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Pick The Withlacoochee Bluegrass Festival For A Good Time

Plucking At Their Heartstrings

Tribune photo by Penny Carnathan

Bluegrass fans gather under "the shed" to listen to one of the dozen or so bands that perform back-to-back over three days at the November 2007 Withlacoochee Bluegrass Festival.

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By PENNY CARNATHAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2008

DUNNELLON - Parking-lot pickers arrive in RVs packed with lawn chairs and banjos and mandolins. They hold tickets to see a dozen hot bands the likes of The Lewis Family and Seneca Rocks! performing in back-to-back shows over three days. But some never make it to the stage at the Withlacoochee Bluegrass Festival.

Instead, they roam from one campsite to the next, instruments in tow. One man hauls his big bass fiddle in the back of a golf cart. They pick from 9:30 one morning till 5 the next, crooning "Tumbling Tumbleweed" and "Wildwood Rose" around campfires that blanket 400 acres in the middle of nowhere with smoke.

Bluegrass lullabies for those who choose to sleep at night.

"I seldom go to the stage," says 58-year-old Bill Taylor, whose $50 ticket is going pretty much unused at the November festival. He hit pop fame as a high school senior playing with the Royal Guardsmen, the Ocala band that topped the charts in 1966 with "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron."

Here, he's a parking-lot picker, though these days he'd just as soon sit and talk. "You meet so many wonderful people here."

Since the late 1970s, Bill has been bluegrass. He plays mandolin and sings lead with Backwater — scheduled to be on the stage at the March fest.

He also creates computer-generated maps for the Withlacoochee Regional Planning Council.

Bluegrass is a hobby.

"You do it for the love of it," he says. "Like some people do crafts."

There's precious little money or fame in this music, unless you're an Alison Allison Krauss or Ricky Skaggs. Poor folks grew it, like collards and cotton, on hard-scrabble Southern farms.

It's ballads and odes, sung in perfect harmony and with great feeling, about true love and God's love. The tunes, some centuries old, preach values, commiserate with pain, laugh at humanity's clumsiness. They're played mostly by older white folks whose voices carry the flavors of fried pork cracklinÖ and sweet potato pie.

They pick, pluck and strum with a speed and agility that sometimes seems it must come straight from the Almighty.

But, similarities noted, bluegrass lovers and players are not all alike. Some are young. Some have Yankee accents. Some infuse their music with blues or country undertones.

One plays with just his left hand.

The One-Armed Picker, as many around here call him, lost his right arm trying to swing from a power line when he was 6. He's 70 now. He makes a living trapping wild hogs and harvesting swamp cabbage — hearts of palm to the restaurants that buy it.

He's so good at bluegrass, he played the Grand Ol' Opry in 1969. He's so good, not a day goes by that there's not a small crowd gathered at his little International Airstream trailer, parked spitting distance from the only bathhouse at the campground.

"I learned from the li'l Black Diamond strings," explains Solomon John Hall, a lifelong resident of Chiefland. "You could get a whole college education from them."

He explains it three times. It's not enough. The gist seems to be that, strummed open, a guitar doesn't play any chord. Rearrange the strings and it will. Apply a capo, and that open chord changes as the capo moves. S.J., as friends call him, figured it out by studying a package of Black Diamonds when he was about 30 years old.

He makes some other accommodations for the lone hand. He wears women's fake fingernails on three fingertips. And he's got the only plug-in guitar in this very acoustic world. He doesn't much rearrange the strings anymore, just tunes 'em different.

He remembers the introduction when he played the Grand Ol' Opry. He was so nervous, thinking he and his electric guitar were gonna get booed off. Someone gave him a pill to calm him down.

And then he heard the master of ceremonies.

"This fella here ain't got no hit record," the man said. "He's a little different. If you notice, one of his wings is missing. But he's fixin' to fly."

And S.J., The One-Armed Picker, flew.

He shares this story with his campground neighbor, a brand-new friend and novice picker from near Daytona Beach. Jim Crawford, 64, is clearly thrilled to be in the company of this man he should have heard of. S.J.'s astounding. He's picking circles around Jim, and giving him one-on-one lessons right here in the dust.

"Who in the world could say they don't believe in God when they hear you play the guitar?" Jim says, near reverent.

These disparate voices, stories, talents come together in seemingly effortless harmony. Just like the music.

"You never meet a bad bluegrass person," declares Harvey Phillips. "All bluegrass lovers are friends."

Nice People Only

RVs, wedged awning to dump station on their campsites, make for extra-neighborly courtesy. Strangers laugh together. Kids bicycle alone along the dirt roads under the trees or head to the river with fishing poles. Women do a happy one-two shuffle to the portapotty, where their men stand waiting for them, gossiping.

Harvey, a 72-year-old Brooksville resident, is a picker. Plays banjo.

He and a group of friends sit under the awning of the camper he shares with his wife, Sue, on a sunny Friday afternoon. By request, two in the group — 35-year-old Eric Simmons of Dade City and 64-year-old Tom LaRocca of Punta Gorda — tinker with "Dueling Banjos." As they piece it together, a mandolin joins them, then a guitar. Soon, they're all hitting the chords, the tempo, together, and a small crowd materializes. They sound — to an admittedly untrained ear — like a band that's been doing "Dueling Banjos" together forever.

"If they're not nice, we weed 'em out," confides Alison Adams, 69-year-old president of the Soggy Bottom Bluegrass Bunch, a club of 600. She lives in Williston, and she's a sit-and-grinner — content just to listen. "We ignore them. They know intuitively they're in the wrong place."

True enough. This is a nice, Christian, family weekend. People drink, yeah, but they don't get falling-down drunk. Well, not often. Happened about three years ago; everyone remembers it. The big fiddle player could hardly stand up. They sent him packing.

Same's true for boobs, bare bellies and the like.

This year, a young woman squatting in a miniskirt — and causing a ruckus, according to some — in front of the stage during the hot-hot-hot Grascals performance drew 79-year-old festival matriarch Peggy Knight herself into the big pavilion on Saturday night.

Peggy told her three times to leave. The woman ignored her. Peggy called the cops.

"The girl was causing a disturbance being immodestly dressed," the matriarch offers in terse explanation the next day. She adds later, a little sadly, "It's the first time in 27 years someone's been taken off to jail."

Events Are A Family Effort

Peggy is not a woman without a sense of humor. She's not even a woman who goes to church every Sunday. She's genteel and elegant in black lace jacket, cream blouse, black slacks and bare feet, which she prefers.

She lives behind the pavilion in a white plantation-style house with almost enough bedrooms upstairs for each of her nine great-grandchildren. The land has been in the family for six generations. Her daddy got it by drawing straws with the other heirs after her Uncle Mose died without a will.

Peggy's husband, Lonnie, who died in 2006, started clearing palmettos and vines from the hammock overlooking the Withlacoochee River nearly 30 years ago. He chopped them out mostly by hand, finally caving to his wife and daughters' big idea to throw their own bluegrass festival.

The festivals are now twice a year; a family effort. There's a job for 'most everyone who wants one — the two daughters, four grandchildren, their children, even Lonnie's 85-year-old brother, who preaches on Sunday morning.

They work beneath the many trees Lonnie left standing — giant oaks, magnolias and persimmons hung with thousands of long, gray Spanish-moss beards that call to mind the old bluegrass players who came before.

The moss sweeps the tops of 750 or so recreational vehicles, buses and vans on campsites carved like puzzle pieces. A hundred or so tents spread out, more relaxed, in a clearing called The Pond (although there is no pond). For the tents, there is no water, electricity, fire rings or picnic tables.

"This is a primitive, natural location — Old Florida," a festival flyer warns. "We will keep it that way."

There's just the one bath house: six toilets, four showers and two sinks each for the men and women. No blow dryers, ladies — there's no electricity. The bath house was built years ago by Marty Raybon and friends, back when he was a block mason, before he became lead singer for the country band Shenandoah.

Over three days, between campers and one-day visitors, the festival draws 3,000 to 3,500 people, from diehard fans to people seeking a day in the woods surrounded by music. Some say it's the best bluegrass festival in the state.

"This is probably the most beautiful site,'' says Soggy Bottoms' Adams. "It's the friendliness, the quality of the pickers."

Gary Hunt, a 49-year-old from Inverness with a Maine accent, weaves expertly among the big RVs. He's a parking-lot picker, looking to get in on a jam or just catch a good one.

"You always cock your ear," he instructs. "There's a picker around here someplace."

Reporter Penny Carnathan can be reached at (813) 259-7612 or at pcarnathan@tampatrib.com.

ON TBO: Keyword: bluegrass, to catch the sights and sounds of campground life at the Withlacoochee Bluegrass Festival.

THE SPRING FEST

WHEN: March 28 to 30; 1:45 p.m. to about 9 p.m. March 28 and 29; Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday March 30

WHERE: South side of U.S. 40 between U.S. 19 (Inglis) and U.S. 41 (Dunnellon)

PERFORMERS: The Grascals, U.S. Navy Bluegrass Band, The Gary Waldrep Band, Larry Gillis Band, Joe Isaacs & Stacy York & Mountain Bluegrass; Wes Thibodeaux & The Cajun Travelers; The Scott Anderson Band; Backwater; The Lewis Family; The Marksman; The Wilson Family Band; and The Gandy Brothers. You'll get a schedule when you arrive.

HOW MUCH: Weekend tickets are $50 through March 22; $55 at the gate; Friday or Saturday only costs $28; Sunday only is $12 (discounts for children). You must buy a concert ticket to enter the grounds.

CAMPING: Primitive camping (no electricity or water) is $15 for the weekend; sites with electricity and water are available with a minimum of two adult tickets for $33 in advance, $39 at the gate.

RESERVATIONS OR INFORMATION: Call (352) 465-1842 or go to scottandersonmusic.com/withlacoochee.htm to get a reservation form for campsites or tickets

IF YOU GO:

Bring extra lawn chairs to leave at "the shed" — the stage area. Space under the roof is reserved for $5 a seat (for one day or three). Reserve your spot when you call to reserve a campsite.

Beyond the roof, there's plenty of spots to watch and listen without a $5 reservation. Stake your claim with a chair when you arrive. The unwritten rule is if you're not sitting in your seat, someone may sit in it for you. They'll graciously move when you reclaim it.

If you choose to hang out at your campsite, tune to 100.1 FM to hear the bands.

In the concert area, vendors offer buffet dinners during limited hours Thursday through Saturday nights, and a Sunday breakfast buffet. Others sell treats, ranging from fresh boiled peanuts to elephant ears, and everything from mandolins to jars of preserves.

If you decide to break away from the festival, Dunnellon, six miles to the east, is quaint and walkable with a number of antique shops.

FALL FESTIVAL: The festival is held twice a year. The fall event is scheduled for Oct. 31 to Nov. 2.

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