There’s a Spotify playlist of essential Telluride Bluegrass Festival listening below (listen along as a soundtrack). I added some notes about the pieces from each decade. Additionally, the chronologies of each of these artists’ performances at Telluride Bluegrass Festival are at the very end.
During this past RockyGrass, I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of a new Telluride Bluegrass Festival (TBF) documentary, Rings of Time. While chock-full of amazing historical footage and plenty of details on the most notable artists that have played the festival, it only brushes up against what I see as this festival’s legacy — the Telluride Bluegrass Festival functions as a patron for the development of stringband music and artists, especially those that play every year (namely the Telluride House Band members mandolinist Sam Bush, banjoist Béla Fleck, bassist Edgar Meyer, dobro player Jerry Douglas, and Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile).
A worthy comparison to a standing gig at TBF is the MacArthur Fellowship. A “Genius Grant” is not given as a crowning achievement; it is awarded to deserving individuals who will build on their art, continue their craft, or push themselves even further (be it in basketmaking, structural biology, or playing the mandolin [Chris Thile won in 2012]). This annual gig is not designed to have that effect, yet over the years it has increasingly functioned as a flywheel for acoustic music.
The musical core of TBF is the New Grass Revival (NGR). They performed at the 2nd annual festival, and Sam Bush, leader of NGR, has performed at every single festival since then (an almost incomprehensible feat of dedication). In 1982, their lineup changed, adding a young banjoist Béla Fleck and guitarist Pat Flynn (Béla has now played 44 festivals). This band’s legacy is well documented, and their combination of top-notch musicianship, unbounded creativity, and sheer guts set a standard for the musicians of that era. This in turn has had an undeniable impact on progressive stringband music since then.
While opaque to most fans, it is nearly impossible to keep any band going. Unless their success is through the roof, the mortality rate of bands is tragically high (often also true with great success). For an alternative band like New Grass Revival to have an annual anchor gig, a place to reconvene with musical friends, and an open audience to explore their truest expression of music, this helped provide the necessary glue to get through thankless gigs, thousands of miles in a van, and the unavoidable conflicts that arise. Chris Thile echoed this sentiment about TBF, saying, “The proliferation of ideas here, I live on it for the rest of the year.”
As the festival’s open-minded reputation grew, other genre-bending instrumental pioneers joined the circle alongside Sam Bush and Béla Fleck from NGR. Dobro phenom Jerry Douglas, fiddle wunderkind Mark O’Connor, and bass legend Edgar Meyer became fixtures at TBF. Back in the crucible of Nashville (where they all lived), these musicians constantly collaborated and created some of the most important albums of the era. While TBF didn’t create Béla Fleck’s landmark bluegrass album Drive, the lineup choice (Fleck, Bush, Douglas, O’Connor, Tony Rice, Stuart Duncan, and Mark Schatz) and cross-pollination from Telluride are undeniable. In fact, all three of Béla’s landmark bluegrass albums (Drive, The Bluegrass Sessions, and My Bluegrass Heart) have personnel from this core group of musicians.
In 1987, the festival booked the Telluride All-Stars (Bush, Douglas, Fleck, Meyer, and O’Connor) on the heels of Edgar Meyer’s album “Unfolding.” In short order, this became the supergroup Strength In Numbers, and back in Nashville they co-composed a suite of tunes (5 members of the group, each piece co-written with a different member totals 10 tunes) and recorded the seminal, watershed masterpiece “The Telluride Sessions.” And every June in Telluride, these musicians returned to this mountain town to blast off.
A group of band leaders with this much talent and opportunity could not last long, and after the annual Strength In Numbers sets ended in 1993, a variation surfaced a few years later when Tony Rice played TBF (Thunder Jam in 1998-1999). The Telluride House Band (Bush, Douglas, Fleck, Meyer, fiddle legend Stuart Duncan, and guitar superhero Bryan Sutton) began their annual set in 2007, performing a dynamic repertoire spanning from traditional bluegrass songs to deep cuts from their collective catalog (from NGR to Unfolding to Strength in Numbers), and new compositions and arrangements. Fine bluegrass abounds on festival stages, but this annual gathering of stringband wizards truly has no real equivalent. In 2021, Béla even took the House Band out on tour supporting his My Bluegrass Heart album.
About 20 years ago, the nature of the creative relationship between artists and TBF began to change, especially with Béla Fleck and Chris Thile.
At the 2005 festival, after 15 straight years of playing with the Flecktones, Béla performed with two trios, one jazz and one bluegrass. Since then, the Flecktones have sporadically returned, and Béla has brought a cavalcade of artists as diverse as jazz legend Chick Corea, African kora genius Toumani Diabaté, operatic soprano Renée Fleming, and the entire Colorado Symphony. Looking at the chronology (listed at the end), Béla has brought a new project (or 3) to this stage every year for the last 20 years, in addition to performing with the House Band (which plays a different set list every year). The ambition to pull this off — to bring a brand new Telluride-ready project year after year, with new musicians and new material — is essentially unparalleled in other musical arenas. While many bands will work up new material or change their setlist every night, and classical musicians bring new repertoire to festivals, this type of achievement is unheard of. While likely TBF never asked Béla for this diverse roster of band projects, he has taken the mantle of bringing new work with real staying power to the stage every year.
Mandolin genius Chris Thile, who had performed a handful of times at TBF with Nickel Creek, became a stalwart performer beginning in 2007 when he formed Punch Brothers (for the nerds out there, I know guitarist Bryan Sutton played with How to Grow a Band that first year, but Critter joined them that year for their now-annual Sheridan late-night set). Thile met banjoist Noam Pikelny in Telluride backstage at a late-night Yonder Mountain String Band set, which helped crystallize Thile’s next project: record and perform his 40-minute through-composed piece “The Blind Leaving the Blind.” (Thile, Pikelny, fiddler Gabe Witcher, guitarist Chris “Critter” Eldridge, and bassist Greg Garrison). This band became Punch Brothers (also for the nerds out there, there is no “the” before the band’s name — simply Punch Brothers).
In interviews, Punch Brothers have described their process of writing music, and they strive to create music that will feel good performing on stage, i.e., the music is conceived and developed with this annual gig at the top of mind. Punch Brothers is nothing if not ambitious, and aside from playing their 40-minute suite at TBF, they have played Bach, Debussy, all bluegrass sets, premiered new tunes, worked up old traditional numbers for their set, and even brought Thile’s radio show “Live From Here” to the stage in Telluride.
In 2013, Thile began opening the festival with a solo set, and what he performs is simply astounding, from improvising the entire setlist (which I saw him do) to taking alternating requests (one from the audience, one from Thile), to performing a movement from Béla Bartók’s solo violin work (the other Béla). It’s an almost incomparable level of musical ambition, comfort on that stage, and drive that has become almost commonplace at TBF.
Without this festival, would these artists still be ambitious, still record and tour creative projects relentlessly? Undoubtedly yes. Would they win Grammys? Likely so. Does getting to play year after year in one of the most stunning mountain towns, on a legendary stage, with old friends and inspiring musicians for an adoring crowd help? Without a doubt, yes.
Notes and further sources:
Notes on the playlist:
70s: This begins with some original New Grass Revival, then the song “Watermelon Man” offers a direct comparison of a song by the original lineup with Courtney Johnson and Curtis Burch to the new 1982 ensemble with Pat Flynn and Béla Fleck.
80s: The next handful of tunes are music from that era, then comes a tune from Béla Fleck’s first bluegrass album Drive. A couple of my faves from Strength In Numbers (though every tune is a gem on that album), and a piece from the first Flecktones album.
90s: These are a handful of Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and Jerry Douglas ensemble pieces. From classical to bluegrass to jazz
00s: More Sam Bush, Béla’s first project with his wife Abigail Washburn (Sparrow Quartet is one of my favorite of his albums), Edgar and Béla’s collaboration with Zakir Hussain, and a tune from Chris Thile’s Not All Who Wander Are Lost (where he creatively hired most of the Telluride House Band to help him out). Punch Brothers formed towards the end of this decade.
10s to Present: After about track 30 on this playlist, there is a smattering of tracks from Béla, Jerry, Chris Thile and Michael Daves, Punch Brothers, and more. I could keep going year by year, project by project, and album by album, but I assume that if you have read or listened this far into the article, you can find your own way. Or comment below if you want more listening ideas.
A few documentaries about these artists that offer a view into their astounding work ethic
Obstinato: Making Music for Two: about Béla and Edgar making “Music for Two”
How To Grow A Band: a documentary of early Punch Brothers performing a 40-minute work by Thile called “The Blind Leaving the Blind”
Revival: The Sam Bush Story: rental from Amazon, phenomenal footage of early NGR