Snapshots: Watermelon Pickers Festival @ Watermelon Park (Berryville, VA) — 9/16-9/19/21

Posted on 09/24/2021 by Chester Simpson in Live Review and tagged Americana, Bela Fleck, Bijou Creole, bluegrass, Bumper Jacksons, Cedric Watson, Charley Crockett, Daryl Davis, music festival, The Infamous Stringdusters, Town Mountain, Watermelon Pickers Festival.

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Charley Crockett performs at Watermelon Pickers Festival 2021. (Photo by Chester Simpson)

Watermelon Picker’s Fest is one of my favorite festivals that I look forward to every year. The experience of camping, socializing with old and new friends while listening to music is an amazing experience not to be over looked. Besides music on the stages, there’s the night jam sessions, where various musicians travel from campsite to campsite for a special musical experience. It’s an opportunities to hangout with performers in a pleasant, usually quite rural, setting.

Live Review: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones @ Strathmore Music Center — 12/2/19

Posted on 12/04/2019 by Mark Engleson in Live Review and tagged Bela Fleck, Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, bluegrass, jazz, Nashville, Strathmore, Strathmore Music Center, Tennessee.

Bela Fleck performs at MerleFest on April 27, 2018. (Photo by cp_thornton)

We all have ideas and preconceptions about different kinds of music. We can’t help it; we’re exposed to something, and it fixes our notion of what it is. For years, whenever I thought of jazz, I pictured a saxophone in my mind’s eye, and I heard a particular sound. While that sound is representative of some jazz, it’s certainly not representative of all it.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, an all-star lineup of progressive jazz musicians, demolished and rebuilt my ideas of what jazz is and can be at the Strathmore Music Center recently.

Snapshots: Watermelon Park Festival @ Clarke County Fairgrounds (Berryville, VA) — 9/20-9/23/18

Posted on 10/01/2018 by Chester Simpson in Live Review and tagged Americana, Bela Fleck, Billy Strings, bluegrass, Chester Simpson, country, folk, Furnace Mountain, Jack Dunlap, John Miller Jr., Johnny Bluegrass and the Porta John Pickers, Kentucky Thunder, Marty Stuart, Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Molly Tuttle, music festival, Richie Stearns, Ricky Skaggs, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, roots, Shepherds Ford Productions, The Ingramettes, The Jeff Austin Band, The Woodshedders, Watermelon Park, Watermelon Park Festival.

Marty Stuart and Watermelon Park owner John Miller Jr. at the Watermelon Park Festival in September 2018. (Photo by Chester Simpson)

Watermelon Park, located in Berryville, Virginia, on the banks of the Shenandoah River, is a local haven for camping, tubing and kayaking all summer long. It hosted the 15th annual Watermelon Park Festival recently, and we’ve got pictures of the performing bands to prove it!