July 28, 29 and 30, 2005 – Hollins University campus
My wife, Carol, and I attended the Thursday (July 28) evening concert of FiddleFest specifically to see The Jugbusters perform live and we were not disappointed. These artists are full of energy and they make it fun to watch and listen to old time music.
I met Bill Richardson (band leader, vocals and fiddle) online when I first started my Live at the Rex Theater Radio Show. Their CD album Live from the REX in GALAX Virginia played for several weeks on my first episode of the show. This time I got to meet Bill in person and he’s a heck-of-a-nice-guy.
I had also met Russ Boyd (vocals and banjo-clawhammer style) at the Floyd Country Store when the band I play with (Oriskany Strings) played there this past April. Since then Russ and I have become online friends and converse often on matters related to my radio station.
Not only do I like the music this band plays, I really like their showmanship. This is a group of musicians who know how to entertain an audience. They don’t talk to themselves on stage, they talk to the audience. And, they don’t keep looking at themselves while on stage – they look (and smile) at the audience. Nor do they stand on stage like a bunch of expressionless zombies – they dance around while playing because the music they play will make anyone want to dance, including themselves. Just about every bluegrass and old-time band should watch and study their techniques for putting on a concert, if thye want to entertain a public audience – not just the musicians in the audience.
I took my band’s new digital audio recorder with me to the concert. This is a Marantz PMD660 flash memory recorder which I really like. I used a pair of omni-directional in-ear microphones and recorded some of the performance. Click here to listen to some of their concert as I heard it from my lawn chair. MP3 audio file duration is about 23 minutes and the size is 5.4 MB.
About the only downside of the Jugbusters’ performance that I could see, was the lack of a dance stage and dancers. The organizers certainly didn’t set up an area conducive to two-steppin’, flat-footin’ and square dancin’. The roped off area in front of the stage was all grass and a bit long at that. We couldn’t get any more than two couples (including Carol and me) up to try a square dance. Of course, that was really fortunate for me since I don’t know how to square dance. But I was gonna’ try! I understand from Gene Guilliams (lead male vocalist for the Oriskany Strings) that last night one of the Roanoke TV stations showed Carol and me flat footin’ to the Jugbusters. I’m sure glad I missed that because I don’t know how to flat-foot either. But I try!
We stayed and listened to the Rush Hour Bluegrass (also featured on my Live at the Rex Theater radio show awhile back), Tim Graves and Cherokee (Tim is one awesome dobra player and has a great voice, and Louis Reid and Cherokee. I noticed that these two latter bands used an electric bass guitar. The one with Louis Reid and Cherokee was too loud for my ears.
