Old-time bluegrass draws young talent at festival

Not much gets a bluegrass crowd worked up quite like the sound of a banjo player on a white-lightning clawhammer tear, and the one at the annual Bootheel Bluegrass Festival was no different.

As the Chris Talley Trio played Friday night, the bluegrass fans in the Bavarian Halle banquet hall in Fruitland tapped boots and patted knees to keep rhythm, but whooped and hollered whenever the young lady with the banjo really got rolling.

The festival featured around a dozen bluegrass groups from around the Midwest.

This weekend's event marked the 11th year since Bruce Punches started it, said organizer Bull Harman, who now runs the show with his wife, Tammy.

"It seems to be getting bigger and bigger every year," Bull said of the festival's attendance.

"Last year, we had every chair in this place out here, and even some broken ones. We had close to 400 people on the Saturday [of 2015]," he said.

He said Saturday usually is the biggest day because most people are off of work, but he was pleased with the turnout Thursday and Friday.

Thursdays are gospel night at the festival, and some musicians, such as Hanna Harper of the Harper Family, said gospel music and bluegrass go hand in hand.

"When we play bluegrass gospel, it's more of a ministry than just for fun," she said.

She and her family, from Bunker, Missouri, write original music and have been performing around the Midwest for seven years.

At 16 years old, the singer is one of the youngest performers, but nowhere near the youngest. Even outside the banquet hall's main stage, there were preteens lounging around, absentmindedly cranking out intricate licks.

Harman said generally, the younger the performer, the more people want to see them play.

"They're the next genre, the musicians of the future," he said. "I love seeing kids' bands. People seem to really like them."

He said the multi-generational appeal of bluegrass music has created opportunities for younger musicians.

"And [Southeast Missouri and Illinois] is a great area for music," he said. "We've got some great talent around here."

Bull and Tammy are also part of their own bluegrass group, Bull Harman and Bull's Eye, which have played all over the country, including the Grand Ole Opry.

But a broken picking thumb sidelined him for this year's festival. His replacement, Dalton Harper, said what makes bluegrass special is the dynamism between players. "Everything has a sort of a drive to it that you don't get in other types of music," he said.

Bluegrass aficionados might agree -- once a band gets to picking, there's an intricacy to the riffs, a tightness to the harmonies -- often all at a quick pace.

"There's not so many filler instruments in bluegrass," he said. "There's more of a rhythm section."

Tiffany Burie, matriarch of the Burie Family band, studied music in college and helped her children pick up instruments and learn to harmonize from a young age.

"Because it's really a musician's genre," she said. "There's really no smoke and mirrors in bluegrass. You can either play it, or not."

That's what attracted local bluegrass fan and Cape Girardeau County Commissioner Charlie Herbst to the genre, he said.

"I've been coming out to these [bluegrass festivals] as long as they've been going on," he said.

But it's more than the music to him. He said he's been attending bluegrass festivals in other states for years, and the folks who show up are always trustworthy. He recalled a festival in Arkansas where a person could get there early, set up their chair or belongings in a spot to save their seat, leave for an hour and come back to find their possessions undisturbed.

"Now, could you imagine going to an Aerosmith concert and marking a chair, going to get something to eat and coming back to find your chair still there?"

tgraef@semissourian.com

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