Westport Folk and Bluegrass Festival returns for 18th time

Ireland’s leading bluegrass festival will return to Westport this week for the 18th time. Twenty-four acts (fifteen from the USA, two from the UK and seven from Ireland) will perform in 10 different venues around the town of Westport, over the course of the weekend, from June 7 to 9.

The Westport Folk and Bluegrass Festival programme features ticketed concerts, free pub gigs, official and spontaneous sessions, a square dance, a gospel hour and an academic symposium.

This year, the festival programme has an additional offering to its traditional 3-day event, with a very special pre-festival concert on Thursday, June 6, featuring two of the genre's most regarded artists, Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell.

Friday's main concert will feature two American acts, who will perform their own interpretation of American Old-Time and country music, based on their state of residency: father and daughter Dirk and Amelia Powell (Louisiana) and Martha Spencer and The Wonderland Country Band (Virginia).

The main concert on Saturday night will feature three American bluegrass acts, who all in turn will play varying styles of bluegrass music from different parts of the US: Remedy Tree (Florida), Chris Luquette and Rick Faris (Seattle/Kansas), and The Wayfarers (Ohio).

Each of those main concerts will take place at Westport Town Hall Theatre, but to no surprise, given the stellar line-ups, they are already all sold out. But fear not, there will be plenty more music to catch over the festival weekend, as previous years have seen spontaneous sessions erupt on street corners and in many pubs, and the festival club at the Clew Bay Hotel has been known to host a monster session from morning until night!

_{Rhiannon Gidden and Dirk Powel will get events underway with a special pre-festival gig on Thursday, June 6}

There are still a handful of tickets available for the Sunday night concert, the wind-down of the festival, which has affectionately become known as 'The Folky Thing'. This year, this special intimate event which takes place in Matt Molloy’s Yard Bar venue, will feature the dulcet tones of the fabulous Pauline Scanlon from the Kingdom of Kerry.

Other international acts who will play at this year’s festival are: Zoe & Cloyd (North Carolina), Big Chimney Barn Dance (Alaska), Late For The Train (California), Tom Nechville & Lind Leavitt (Portland), Hackney Hill Pickers (London) and The Folly Brothers (The Midlands, UK).

Local musicians

Amongst the local musicians who will perform will be Louisburgh-based old-time musician, Tim Rogers, Westport’s own The Rocky Top String Band and a trio of local trad musicians Freda Hatton, Julie Langan & Declan Askin, who once again will play with Cork Bluegrass musician Brendan Butler, for a special session featuring a combination of Irish traditional music, old-time tunes and bluegrass songs.

For those of you interested in adding to your repertoire, there will be two very special workshops – a Fiddle workshop with Natalya Zoe Weinstein and a Banjo workshop with master banjo maker Tom Nechville.

The Festival's flagship project - The Universities Project - will see East Tennessee State University Bluegrass Band – Pythagoras joined by students from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in UL and academics from both of the universities, as well as professors from Middle Tennessee State University and the Durham University for the festival’s first ever academic symposium. This event will include a round table discussion, a Q&A about the Irish session versus the Bluegrass jam, and will be followed by a large transatlantic session featuring all the participants and more.

Another addition to the festival’s offering in recent years has been the square dance. ‘What’s a square dance?’ you might ask! Think of an Irish céilí, but with American old-time music and that’s essentially what a square dance is. Don’t worry, there will be someone calling the dances, so you don’t need to be an expert to have fun here!

Finally, what has become the highlight of the festival over the years is ‘The Gospel Hour’. Some of the artists perform in the magnificent setting of Westport’s Holy Trinity Church on Sunday morning, and it is usually bursting at the seams, with standing room only. A truly uplifting experience.

For more details, visit the festival's website.