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Travel Washington: Darrington’s bluegrass thrives in Evergreen State |
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Written On: March/April 2008 |
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Written By: Richard S. Davis |
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No business plan. No marketing strategy. No structured financing. The event began simply enough: Just a desire to make good bluegrass music with friends and neighbors. Today, the Darrington Bluegrass Festival has become one of the Northwest’s signature summer musical celebrations and a tribute to the energy and vision of a small group of volunteers.
Its bluegrass roots stretch from Washington’s North Cascades to the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. From them stems the flourishing festival that each July brings thousands of visitors to this small Snohomish County timber town.
Darrington’s Carolina connection reaches back to the 1880s. Scott Philyaw, a Western Carolina University historian, says the earliest migrant from North Carolina shows up as a missionary on the state’s 1888 territorial census. Others followed, coming to Washington as dairy farmers, business owners, and laborers. In 1904, a North Carolina newspaper proclaimed, “Our Best People are Leaving.”
The Carolinians stuck together. “As early as 1908, they were organizing what they called ‘Tarheel picnics’ in Darrington,” Philyaw said.
Appalachian migration
With the decline of Appalachian logging in the 1930s, hundreds of people left western North Carolina in search of work.
Roy Morgan, a retired logger and one of the festival’s founders, came to Darrington in 1958 at 19. “I knew some people here, and the country’s about the same in western North Carolina as it is here,” he said.
Their cultural and musical traditions accompanied them, and they wrote home to friends and relatives they’d left behind. “It’s an adaptable and transportable culture,” said Philyaw. “But it also holds onto things.”
Ernest Queen came to Sedro Woolley from Sylva, N.C. in 1955, having heard from others who’d made the move that he could double his paycheck in Washington.
Now an active 75, Queen still plays rhythm guitar and sings with his band, Queens Bluegrass, which has performed at the Darrington festival about a dozen times. With a grandfather who played banjo at Carolina barn dances, he grew up with mountain music.
Dan Hays, the executive director of the Nashville-based International Bluegrass Music Association, calls bluegrass a “music born out of migration.” The people who left the mountains knew well the Scots-Irish fiddle tunes, southern blues, and gospel music from which Bill Monroe created the distinctive bluegrass sound in the late 1940s.
The sounds of Appalachia found sympathetic echoes in the evergreen forests that welcomed the transplanted Tarheels.
Overgrown jam session
“We just started having jam sessions over at Grover’s,” says Morgan, a banjo player. Grover is Grover Jones, who owns a trailer park in Darrington where Roy and Diana live.
Soon the sessions were drawing folks from Bellingham to Seattle, 80 miles to the southwest. Jones’s wife, Earnestine, says there were times when they had 53 people making music at the house.
After a while, Morgan says, “we overrun Grover’s house and there were people all over the trailer park.”
The Joneses came from the same North Carolina community as Earnest Queen: Grover at 9 in 1938 and Earnestine in 1947 at 15.
Earnestine also grew up with music, mostly Southern gospel.
“My first memories were of music with my family [and] of people coming to my house and singing,” she says. “I’ve been singing all my life.”
The Saturday night sessions moved to the schoolhouse, finally ending up at the community center for a jam and Tarheel dinner on the second Sunday of the month.
Bluegrass capitol of the Northwest
By this time, Darrington had established itself as the bluegrass capital of the Northwest, as proclaimed on a sign that used to stand at the city limits. Prominent performers would often play at small town gatherings.
Bill Monroe himself once showed up to play a freebie at one of the regular Darrington sessions. Although he wasn’t paid for the gig, Monroe didn’t leave empty-handed.
Morgan’s band, the White Horse Mountaineers had written an instrumental tune they called White Horse Breakdown.”
“I’m sure we played it the day he was up here,” Morgan says. “It must have hit him a little bit, because he put it on record and it was pretty close to what we were doing.” He still laughs about his contribution to the Monroe repertoire.
As the gatherings grew, so did the aspirations. In 1976 the Darrington Bluegrass and Country Music Maker Association put on its first festival at the rodeo grounds outside of town.
“We decided to try to have a festival,” Roy Morgan said. “And so we did.”
Another of the festival’s founders, Bertha Stations Whiteside, said, “We did it for the enjoyment of the music.” Her band, The Combinations, continues to perform regularly at Darrington and other Northwest venues.
First festival
The first festival featured local bands, many of the folks who played in the weekly sessions. With word-of-mouth publicity and a few flyers the event drew only about 150 people. But like the jam sessions, the festival flourished. When the state patrol began complaining about the cars parked on both sides of the highway, it was time to move.
By then, the group had raised some cash. From the beginning, they’d split ticket sales with the bands. By 1984, they were able to buy 40 acres near Darrington for $90,000. After a lot of hard work, all by volunteers, they created a spectacular amphitheater with a stage facing towering White Horse Mountain.
Festival attendance continued to grow. In the mid-1990s, revenues had reached the point where it became possible to bring in nationally recognized artists.
Diana Morgan, Roy’s wife, handles bookings for the festival. She’s been astonishingly successful in bringing some of bluegrass music’s top performers to Darrington, including Rhonda Vincent, Larry Sparks, Cherryholmes, IIIrd Tyme Out, and Doyle Lawson. Morgan says most of them comment on the unparalleled beauty of the venue.
Despite the large attendance, the festival retains the comfortable, friendly feeling of those old Tarheel picnics. That’s no accident. To encourage family attendance, they keep the prices low. This year, a pre-purchased three-day ticket will cost $45. Camping, whether for a day or a week, goes for $20.
Tourism boost
The IBMA’s Hays has seen tremendous growth in what he calls the bluegrass festival movement. Darrington got in at the front end of a national trend.
“Over the last 15 to 20 years, we’ve seen more communities hosting these events. A bluegrass festival can be a signature event for an area.”
And, he notes, their footprint is fairly light.
Amy Spain, executive director of the Snohomish County Convention and Visitors Bureau, estimated that the festival generates between $760,000 and $1.4 million for Snohomish County. Typically, the campground is filled 500 RVs and is 80-percent occupied by the Wednesday before the festival opens.
The IBMA’s Hays reports that “the number of people who indicate they like and listen to bluegrass music has doubled in the last decade,” reaching 15.3 million listeners in 2007. The Internet, satellite radio, and the festival movement have all expanded the fan base.
Three generations
“Artistically, we’re at one of the most interesting times for any art form,” he says. Three generations of bluegrass musicians are carrying the music forward: The pioneers who began the music with Bill Monroe in the 1940s, the now-mature artists who grew up with them, and the young players who are grafting their own brand of music onto the roots of tradition.
As the music evolves the forms and sounds change, much as early bluegrass itself marked a fusion of cultures and eras. Today’s bluegrass will often incorporate elements of jazz, swing, contemporary country, Celtic, and rock, as well as old-time mountain music. Fans, musicians and critics disagree, sometimes heatedly, about how far the boundaries can be pushed and still be defined as bluegrass.
Hays puts such disputes into careful perspective.
“If it’s not worth arguing about,” he says, “then I guess it’s dead.”
To see just how alive bluegrass is in Washington, come to Darrington this summer. The tradition lives.
Researchers at Western Carolina University continue to seek information about the North Carolina Societies active in Skagit and Snohomish counties in the early 20th Century. Please contact Richard Davis if you have any material on these groups.
Sidebar: Bluegrass Festivals in Washington
March 28-30
Long Beach Bluegrass Festival, Chautauqua Lodge, Long Beach
March 29
Pend Oreille Valley Bluegrass Festival Fund Raiser Concert, Newport High School, Newport
April 4-6
Shelton Old-Time Fiddlers’ Fest, Shelton High School Auditorium
May 2-4
Moses Lake Bluegrass Camp ‘n Jam, Grant County Fairgrounds, Moses Lake
May 9-11
4th Annual Bluegrass from the Forest Festival, Shelton
June 6-9
Winlock Pickersfest, Winolequa Park, Winlock
June 13-15
Sacajawea Bluegrass Festival/Dutch Oven Rendezvous, Sacajawea State Park, Pasco
June 20-22
Wenatchee River Bluegrass Festival, Chelan County Expo Center, Cashmere
June 20-22
Second Annual Amboy Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival, Amboy
July 4-6
Red, White & Bluegrass Family Pickin’ Party, Stevens County Fair & Expo Center, Colville
July 18-20
Darrington Bluegrass Festival, Darrington Bluegrass Music Park, Darrington
July 25-27
Adventure Bluegrass, Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Festival, Stevenson
July 26-28
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