Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding for Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by the Bemidji Regional Airport serving the region with daily flights to the Minneapolis -St Paul International Airport.

More information is available at bemidjiairport.org Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/ Director Randy Cadwell.

Today we take a trip to Pine River, Minnesota where each August good old bluegrass music can be heard coming from the hills during the Lakes Bluegrass Festival.

[Music] In our screen porch we were talking about, you know, we should have a Bluegrass Festival in our area.

[Music] Yeah, we've been playing music for years, Bluegrass music, and in different bands and traveled around the country going to Bluegrass festivals and that's how we even spent our honeymoon is going to Bluegrass festivals.

So, we thought well we need something here in the Brainerd Lakes Area.

So, we probably planned it for several years.

But our first year was out at a ski hill west of Brainerd, Minnesota.

The chamber director here in Pine River approached us about bringing the festival to Pine River.

And so we said sure we'll do that and we had it at the fairgrounds in 2006.

Some local businessmen and women in Pine River started a nonprofit organization, a 501C3, called the Pine River Area Foundation.

In 2019 the foundation purchased this land that we're on now, about 30 acres, it was part of an old golf course.

We wanted our own land and we built the infrastructure, it was grass and the stage we're standing on now was a putting green.

And it was naturally elevated so it was like a perfect place to put the stage and then we put in the rest of the infrastructure, as far as camping, RV pedestals.

We built a 40x100 ft food court or food pavilion where we hold dances and have the the food and meals.

And then we have two other pavilions for workshops and for the bands as a backstage room.

Wednesday is our first official day of the festival.

Okay, so we have two tickets on then 823 to 826 for camping?

Yep.

Perfect let's check you in.

When a lot of the campers arrive they buy their four night camping tickets, so Wednesday they come in.

Hey, thank you.

Have a great time.

Enjoy!

They get their camp set up, they find out where their friends are camped and say hi, and you know hugs, and all the Minnesota way and they get their lawn chairs in place.

Yeah, you can see lawn chairs are in place already.

You know by Friday most of the people who are camping are here so then the focus turns to the music for the rest of the weekend.

Bluegrass, you know, Bill Monroe started it.

It was kind of a mixture between the blues and hillbilly music they called it back then and it's really truly one of the rare all-American art forms.

The instruments are your banjo, your guitar, your bass, which is probably the most important instrument.

Oh, that's what I play, and mandolin, fiddle are the prevalent instruments in Bluegrass.

The songs are going to be about stories from down home, love, lost love, murder, drinking, drinking, missing home, looking for home, wanting to get away from home, yeah, wanting to leave home but it's they're all about stories.

And then another really unique thing about Bluegrass is the harmony.

[Music] On the choruses you'll often hear three-part sometimes more four-part harmonies of the singers taking a different part to make a unique sound that you don't get with one voice.

So, that's a real special part about Bluegrass is the story, the instrumentation, the breaks, the harmonies brings it all together to make Bluegrass.

We have bands from all over the country, award winning, Grammy Award winning, IBMA award winning and we also have some local and regional bands that folks have gotten to know and just love to hear year after year.

[Music] We started playing music about 12 years ago and it started as a family thing so I homeschooled, so we did music every day and he had a great grandpa that played the fiddle and a grandpa that played the fiddle so we got a fiddle and was hoping that he would be able to play the fiddle so that's kind of how it started.

There are four of us, and then I have a younger son that is not quite in the group yet but he's working behind the scenes too, up and coming.

Classify us as traditional, yeah, for sure, we do a lot of old country stuff too.

We've all practiced a lot, we've played a lot of shows too.

When we started we started as a band by traveling about 12 years ago.

Kind of all learned together as a family and just progressed from there.

And he won the Grand Masters in the fiddling so he'll get to be on the Grand Ole Opry Saturday and he'll get to play a song for that so that's super exciting, you know, reaching your goals and working towards something.

[Music] I was playing in a band with my dad on the Gulf coast of Florida and had been doing that eight or nine years at that point and I decided that I wanted to start my own band and kind of do my own sound and so my first call was to Caroline to hire her and start the band together and so this 2023 is our 10th year.

[Music] We do some traditional Bluegrass but then we kind of put our own spin to it so it's I guess modern traditional a little bit.

We do have a little bit more of some progressive songs but we do a combination of just about almost everything, I think.

With this band particularly that is one of our strengths is that we have this great mixture of the very traditional, you know rearing up in the tradition of the music and then the more modern influences of like our fiddle player and our bass player are Jazz musicians and they play very, you know, extravagant styles of music so we have in our band you can tell that influence.

[Music] Thank you so much!

And they're great friends, great musicians, make them welcome The Pale Ales.

[Music] We are a kind of contemporary traditional band.

Yeah right that's a kind of play on words.

Kind of have to start with the Minnesota Bluegrass Association with the origins of the band because we all met playing at different festivals over the years while we were in different bands.

You play at these festivals and the next thing you know you're jamming afterwards, you know, in the campground and you're making friends that way.

And we met up with Marty at a festival at the Lakes Festival actually the Lakes Festival where we all met and we discovered our three-part harmonies that night there.

And we all thought wow that the chemistry was just one of those amazing things and then Marty saw us play as The Lost Tracks as a trio at one of the festivals and he said you know it would be fun to hang out with you guys you know.

Next thing I know Marty's in that we formed a trio around that and then we slowly added John and mostly I think Heath was the next one to come.

We stand forward on the music, and how we present the music we stand forward and I think that's really what we're known for you know our energy and just that we're just going to give you everything we got.

[Music] We try to maintain an aspect of the tradition of what is Bluegrass right down to the instrumentation and however you know we're doing a bunch of Eagles songs, we're doing a Dwight Yoakam song, and we're doing a bunch of classic, a few classic rock songs that are Bluegrass style, too, but I would say our stronghold is holding up the tradition of the first generation of Bluegrass musicians.

I tell you we're all brothers, it seems like that have met each other at different stages in each other's lives but we've come to this and you know I think all of us used to have really serious ambitions about wanting to be in a national touring band, and a few of us have, but sometimes it's just nice to be home and play with your friends.

Yeah, right, and because of that the chemistry of our band is really something.

[Music] So yes there's Bluegrass there's lots of different styles again on the spectrum from real traditional to more modern or progressive Bluegrass, like I said, at our festival here we tend towards the traditional but not all traditional.

In fact we have country bands once in a while playing on our stage so it's not like, you know, we're tunnel vision that we only do this.

And I'm going to try to hunt and peck so if as long as the E string is tuned properly when you put your finger at the point where it's G on the tuner and it's true on here I'll just take and put a little black magic marker right there.

Instead of just sitting in front of a concert all day long people like to get up and move around and one of the things that is one of their favorites is to go and observe the workshops and the workshops are put on by our performers over in the workshop pavilion.

I'm going to just show you my quick pick and thumb strumming, easy to learn.

How to develop arm strength you know and that is I play this it's the G scale.

If you're a picker, if you play, you can sign up and be an attendee you know learning a chord, learning a song, whatever the topic is for that workshop.

But many people like to just walk around and kind of see how it's made.

So they don't play themselves but they like to go up and close, up close and personal and listen to the performers talk about their art, their instruments.

We're just going to rehearse a bit of and if you have any questions you just holler it out and we'll try to answer it best [Music] It's the experience of the friendships, the jam sessions, the see how it's made up close and personal they can really relate to what's going on on the main stage by meeting other people.

But for the second year in a row he is nominated for Male Vocalist of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association that's a big deal that's Greg Blake right there on that guitar.

Thank you Greg and thank you folks.

This is, as I said yesterday, this is my first time to this wonderful festival here, the Lakes Bluegrass Festival, and you've all just opened your hearts, arms, and wallets to me and I really appreciate it.

[Music] That's like one of the last remaining classic Bluegrass Festival, festivals, and what we mean by that is that there's camping, there's jamming, there's a nice stage area, there's workshops.

That's kind of the ingredients of a really great classic Bluegrass Festival.

Well this is our second time at the Lakes Bluegrass Festival.

In 2018 we were over at the fair, the old fairground location, and so we were really excited to get to the new location and see what Tim and Cindy have done with the place and we love it.

It's going to be a great day, they've got a lot lot of lot of campers here, there's a lot of people here and we love being so warmly, you know, accepted so far from home.

It's incredible.

They're just so personable and like family.

You get to feel like you know them as they come through here and play their us and same with the fans, they'll go interact with the artists.

They have a merchandise tent out here and the artists just love it when the fans come over and talk to them and just shake a hand and get their autograph and just visit.

O Brother movie, when that came out, I was making maybe $50 a night when I would do a gig with the band.

I was making $150 a night in a Bluegrass band because Bluegrass became very popular at that time and so that kind of changed my world.

I got into a Bluegrass band right away then after that cuz I was having fun.

I met all these new friends.

It's a happy music yeah so that's a good thing and even though some it's Bluegrass and it's kind of bluesy and kind of sad it's actually good happy music so.

Yeah and some of the lyrics are like really dark lyrics and then you have this bright happy music with it so it's just kind of a different type of music I guess.

It's called the Prisoner's Last Wish.

Well you get a story out of each song.

You know when you're up there playing so the listeners are really intrigued in listening to the music cuz they're listening to the lyrics.

[Music] I don't know there's something about when you listen to it it's so honest, you know, you can't you're not going to you're not going to make it sound better with electronics because you don't need to, right, you can just grab your guitar or mandolin or whatever out of the case and play and it sounds great right then and there as is.

There's a warmth that comes out of a wood instrument that just I think it just touches people when they play it and it makes a perfect virtuoso type instrument.

I mean you feel warm and fuzzy when you play a wood instrument and then when you have other wood instruments around you that are lending there's a real wild chemistry that happens, those complex overtones that come out of wood instruments I think, I don't know, I get all warm and fuzzy and the hair on the back of my neck stands up when there's good instrumentation and good three-part harmonies, you know, it's I think people respond to that.

I think it's about, like this might sound strange, but togetherness like everybody comes together for these festivals as you've seen like thousands of people come together and just enjoy the music together, so about family, about friends, about being together.

The Bluegrass community in itself is like one big whole family.

You know growing up listening to Flatt and Scruggs, you know, Ralph Stanley all that stuff, you know, everybody knows those songs and you know you get together and you know everybody picks you know it's the one big ole reunion you all get together it's a good community, good feeling like that.

The music itself, for me, is just such a family thing, growing up with my dad playing Bluegrass and it's such a part of my life and so the memories from just the music.

You know I can hear songs on Sirius XM or hear them on the radio and it will bring me back to moments in my life and specifically our music that we've created together, you know, I love to think of it as I'm leaving this legacy for my children that one day when I'm long gone you know my kids will pull that up and be like that's my mom, you know, that was Carolyne and my mom together so that's a special thing for me that we're creating something that will be around forever.

And I see a change in the industry where more progressive artists are being more accepted by the general Bluegrass community because the realization is that we need to grow in the genre in order to bring in the young people, bring in the next generation of Bluegrassers.

But I think most even the progressive bands like Mumford and Sons and Billy Strings, especially Billy Strings, even though he plays very progressive Bluegrass he still holds pretty true to those very traditional values.

[Music] lt's the whole experience, not just the sitting in a lawn chair and listening to music, it's the interactions with friends, new friends and old friends.

I think that's the experience.

[Music] Thank you for watching Common Ground.

If you have an idea for a Lakeland PBS production in north central Minnesota, email us at legacy@lptv.org or call 1-800-292-0922.

To watch Lakeland PBS Productions online visit lptv.org or download the free PBS app.

Production funding for Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

More information is available at bemidjiairport.org.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people, November 4th, 2008