The rivers are full. The leaves are green. The sun is working hard to make each day longer. The only thing missing? Grey Fox! The premiere bluegrass festival of the summer is returning to The Walsh Farm in the sleepy Catskill town of Oak Hill, NY this July 19th through the 22nd. This year’s lineup will help any jamband fan to recognize our scene’s roots in bluegrass.

Sometimes I think I am so full of shit. Ask my wife, and it’s probably safe to drop sometimes I think. But coming to Grey Fox Bluegrass Music Festival, a festival I come to every year, trying to think of a new way to make you, fair reader, understand that it is unlike anything that you have or ever will experience? I am full of shit to think I can do this. But thankfully, this year mother nature is co-writing this review, and she’s writing in the blurry ink of rain.

The year will soon come when press releases for the Grey Fox Music Festival, held annually at the tranquil Walsh Farm in Oak Hill, NY, will no longer be necessary.

I have a moleskine book I keep in my pocket at concerts. My wife gave it to me as a gift years ago. She always gives the best gifts. This tattered little vestige to my musical history is used solely for notes at concerts I am reviewing. Nothing could better embody who I am, not just as a writer, but as a person. Every time I write in the book, it is a process. I have to take the now stretched out elastic rope off of the book, turn to the page marked with the connected bookmark and pick up where I left off.

Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival: 40+ bands including Bela Fleck & Chris Thile,  Del McCoury, David Grisman, Jerry Douglas & the Earls of Leicester, The Wood Bros, SteelDrivers, Steep Canyon Rangers, Sierra Hull, Sara Watkins, Della Mae, Elephant Revival, and more! 5 stages. Camping. Family activities. Dancing. Jamming. July 14-17, Oak Hill, NY

Grey Fox is held on the Walsh Farm
1 Poultney Road (off County Route 22)
Oak Hill, NY 12460

Will you be one of the lucky ones? When it’s all over will you be able to say that you were there? That you attended The 2016 Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival at the Walsh Farm in Oak Hill, NY? The stories you’ll tell…

To return to a point in your life that you have already lived is metaphysical. Déjà vu, as most of us call it, feels mystical, even if it has a chemical explanation. Scientific evidence aside, to relive something that you have lived before is an experience that seems to connect us with something beyond ourselves. We can both be in the moment and be able to predict (or at least have the feeling that we are predicting) what is coming around the next corner. But to experience déjà vu and to be able to improve upon the actions that once were? Now that is something different altogether.

What is it that makes Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival (July 16-19 in Oak Hill, NY) the ultimate festival experience? Is it the line-up?

The pop-up and its small footprint we would call home for the next 4 nights was ready. The sun had long since set and the kids were happily snuggled under doubled over blankets in the 1975 Apache Mesa. The evening’s cold temperatures were more than the few packed layers of cotton could defend against, so Laura and I were doing our best to think warm thoughts and be thankful for the reprieve from last year’s unbearable heat as we sat outside in the still and dewy night.  Her vapor filled exhalation was caught in the beam from her headlamp, over top of the festival’s program.

An unbelievable line-up. Food made fresh, local and right. Camping that’s just enough jam-session, just enough ‘kick back and watch the sunset.’ An energy that is beyond description. It’s the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in the foothills of the Catksills outside of Albany, NY, July 17-20 and its high time you came to this premier bluegrass extravaganza. Nickel Creek has reunited and the Del McCoury Band will be there to celebrate for 2 nights in honor of silver haired leader’s 75th birthday.