Thursday

“Lancy!” The kids and I made the turn off the back roads of Oak Hill, NY, onto the Walsh Family Farm for Grey Fox 2025 and her name hit me. Returning after 7 long years away, as my wheels hit the welcoming hay fields of Grey Fox’s world-class bluegrass festival, the magic of the place whispered to me. Lancy. Her family and friends were the amazing folks we had camped with every year between 2012 and 2018 at Grey Fox and, now that I remembered her name, I wondered if they were all here. It didn’t take long for the magic to touch us again. Mid–tent set-up, I realized we didn’t pack a hammer for our tent’s stakes. I went to the campsite next to ours to borrow one. You guessed it: the site was Lancy’s. Something about Grey Fox.

This year, I knew the headliners. For the most part, the rest of this year’s lineup at Grey Fox was unknown to me. You know what that provides? Freedom. Freedom to move around from stage to stage, catching anywhere from a powerful snippet to a vision-changing set from a band. Excuse me if I don’t give you a full review of each band, but that’s not the experience that I had.

However, freedom at a music festival cannot come on its own. You need its silent partner, trust. I trusted that whether the lineup was littered with household names or not, I would be seeing top-tier bluegrass and bluegrass-related music. I’m not the only one. Grey Fox continues to be a destination. People come every year. Since my last trip to the farm, they’ve added a day of camping, which means they’ve added a day of people lined up, sleeping in their RVs, vans, and cars, waiting for that extra day of bluegrass memories being made. When talking about the attendees, my son may have said it best, “No one is here for the first time.”

After setting up camp, we wandered to the Catskill Stage, informally renamed the Dance Tent over the past several years, since it hosts the late-ish nights and gives the Mainstage performer a chance to let their hair out of their ten-gallon hats while the crowd expresses their feelings on a hollow wooden dance floor.

Jim Gaudet and The Railroad Boys were the first act we saw. Jim and his crew have been making music for more years than they care to count, and their loose but aware approach to bluegrass+, including both electric bass and electric guitar, was a reminder of what Grey Fox had in store. While I listened to Jim’s take on the SteelDrivers’ “Drinking Dark Whiskey, Telling White Lies,” I looked around and remembered what a family-friendly event this is. Children running around without their parents circling overhead. Nobody is walking by you and leaning in to offer you anything for sale. I heard that on Friday there were three cops on-site for one drug dealer. Custies rejoice! And the love for the music came through as new moms danced onto the floor with babies on their hips, knowing every word as they adjusted their billowing skirts and cowboy hats. Bluegrass off-centered — the vibe of the Catskill Stage.

I rarely spent time at the Creekside Stage this weekend; not because the music wasn’t my scene, but because that particular stage embraces the opportunity for the performers to take it slow and spend time between songs talking with the audience. It can be an intense experience and my goal was to move around and see as much as I could this weekend. For the most part, I didn’t have time to commit to longer periods with one band, especially only playing half the songs and filling the rest of the time with stories. I will regret this, I am sure, as one of my most memorable times years ago was at the Creekside Stage listening to Del tell stories of his childhood and early years playing with Bill Monroe. My lone trip to the Creekside Stage came on day one this year when I was moving away from Jim Audet and hoping to baptize myself in pure bluegrass before the weekend took me on so many other musical avenues away from the festival’s starting point. It is clear that the organizers of Grey Fox are moving toward a broader palette of music as the festival metamorphoses over the years. But there is still a place for traditional pickers, and Special Consensus on the Creekside Stage scratched that itch for me on that cool Thursday afternoon. It was true bluegrass, and I felt ready for all of the diversity that would be thrown at me for the next three days, now that my base level of traditional pickin’ had been filled.

I was quickly noticing more about how the scene at Grey Fox had changed over the last six years. Obviously, my personal age graph is growing and continues to trend upward at a steady pace, but the age gap at the festival is increasing in both directions, with more folks in their early twenties and no longer just those dragged by an older generation. These kiddos straight out of an Urban Outfitters commercial were attending on their own. Millennials are seeing bluegrass as a scene of acceptance. As I prepared for the festival, I wondered how the last six years, a time in our country fraught with division, would have changed this scene. I wondered about the possibility of MAGA hats, and yet I was greeted by trans brothers and sisters.

I may have fallen in love when I went to the Mainstage after that. OK, she’s married and was talking about breastfeeding her kid moments before coming on stage, so perhaps I am just enamored with Lindsay Lou’s stage presence and sound. She reminded me that folk and bluegrass are closely connected, and when you bend your guitar strings just a bit more than usual, it’s hard to tell the difference between Lindsay’s soulful world observations and a bluegrass ballad. But Lindsay sings from the bottom of her feet and the sound travels through her heart on its way to being delivered to the gaping onlookers. The beauty emanating from her every pore goes beyond her devilish glances and is cemented by her strength as a performer and a woman.

Looking around at the early arrivers for this Thursday night bill, I saw a cross-section of so many types of music fans. One that stood out this night was the pure hippies. Having spent so much time between 2018 and now on the bigger jamband tours, it was refreshing to see people who have not been encumbered by commercialism and the need to have the coolest gear, the best seats, or the most likable posts. These folk were here for the music and the energy of the festival.

Della Mae, longtime Grey Fox staple, was next on the Mainstage. But this set was dedicated to those that had paved the way for an all-female band to have a headlining slot at a bluegrass festival. The young women of the band were augmented by Laurie Lewis and Alice Gerrard (a couple of those pure hippies from a time before TikTok) to celebrate the music of Hazel Dickens — a true female bluegrass pioneer from the early 1900s. Was the music a bit dated? Obviously. But the message of the day was being plucked and harmonized for all to hear — bluegrass is for everyone. The feminist vibes were welcome, on the nose, as Della Mae was playing the music of a woman who would be 100 with students of two women who had a chance to play with her themselves.

I went down the hill, back to the Catskill/Dance Stage to hear Cris Jacobs’ version of alt-rock… funk… country. WTF? He came out swinging with his raspy voice to show the tent that was half-full why it would be full by the end of his first song. I probably sound hyperbolic, but I feel lucky to have discovered this band at Grey Fox. Alternate key dueling solos between a guitar and a harmonically perfect violin are just what I needed. A cigar box guitar sounding like lap steel. Maybe because I had just heard a Dead show from 1990 on the drive down, or maybe it’s because at that time of night I was feeling great, but Cris Jacobs and his violinist falling into a Branford and Jerry give-and-take jam was not what I expected and was exactly what I wanted. Once I heard someone on stage say “I can’t trust you if you don’t like Led Zeppelin,” before going into a Taj Mahal song and a song he recorded with Billy Strings, I was hooked. All boxes checked.

I made one last dreary trip up the hill for Steep Canyon Rangers and, through my sleep-deprived ears, I could hear something different. In addition to needing sleep, it had also been several years since I’d seen the Rangers, but I definitely did not remember the bass player singing so much. And the guitarist wasn’t that tall drink of water with the western North Carolina drawl that could charm the smoke out of tobacco leaves. The Rangers had opened up to new recruits and had taken on a new guitarist. The packaging may have changed, but The Steep Canyon Rangers’ modern take on classic themes, having added drums to the sacred truegrass, is still a crowd favorite for the old fans. This is a step forward the old heads can be proud of. The traditions of bluegrass are safe within the spaces guarded by the likes of the Rangers. Still, where did the old guitarist go? I’d need to do research.

Walking home, I poked my head into Della Mae’s raucous Thursday closing set at the Catskill Stage. Gone were the shackles of yesterday’s music, both relative to the set the ladies had played earlier on the Mainstage, but so were the shackles of an all-boys’ club when it came to bluegrass. Della Mae has not been handed anything, except for an opportunity. But as they put on a show by dance tent vets for dance tent vets, the place was jumping. Falling asleep to a cover of CSN’s “Tin Soldier” truly capped a celebration of the diverse and challenging place bluegrass holds for Grey Fox attendees.

Friday

We finally left the campsite Friday midday, catching an air-conditioned school bus from the corner of Monroe Avenue and Watson Street up the hill to see Le Winston Band’s Canadian zydeco. A few years ago, the organizers of Grey Fox saw a problem and addressed it, taking the daytime Mainstage acts out of the beating sun and putting them under the High Meadow tent; a smaller, covered Mainstage that operates until the dinner break. Lancy’s husband noticed one of the band member’s heavy-metal T-shirt, causing us to wonder about his influences. As this mustachioed Canuck strapped a washboard vest over a Lamb of God shirt, we were more perplexed. Still, I was finding relief seeing a younger band into traditional music. Zydeco will survive; at least, proper French-Canadian zydeco; zydeco covers of “bad guy” by Billie Eilish and “Karma Chameleon,” interspersed within a traditional Cajun medley, overlaid with a fast Québécois hard mix. The lyrics were 80% in French; a bluegrass message of multinational tolerance.

The New Belgium Stage, an opportunity for full-time marketing over the shaded unamplified stage and accompanying beer garden under shade and serving the sponsor’s suds exclusively, is a great addition to an always well-thought-out festival. A beer at the bottom of the Mainstage hill is exactly what the day’s heat ordered before walking down vendors’ row and playing the banjo-guitar hybrid at the strings vendor or making your way to the Catskill Stage. This addition is welcome. Room to dance and a little bit of shade. Somehow you can stand 40 deep and hear the singer and 7 distinct instruments despite the lack of amplification. The threat of Dead covers brought me here, the high-level picking of Pythagoras and assorted guests kept me. Trey Wellington, guesting on banjo, exposed me to a new sound on the old instrument. So rarely is the banjo mixed with non-traditional tempos, with the strength of each pluck more often landing on the expected beats. But I was hearing what the next generation was bringing to the instrument and loved its originality. With a style drawn from Béla and jazz, this guy was taking musical chances to expose so much more ground to the banjo. I’d be looking for more of Trey this weekend.

Bluegrass lends itself to many stages close by. As I walked a few steps away from the New Belgium Stage and a few steps closer to the Creekside, I was just far enough from the Mainstage and just close enough to the Catskill Stage to find myself at the nexus where all the sounds mixed, a beautiful euphony of opportunity.

The sound that drew me from that moment was Johnny & the Yooahoos. Now that Grey Fox has a simple-to-navigate app, I was able to get a bit of background on this Munich, Germany–based international-bluegrass act giving their take on bluegrass standards and new grass ballads. Swaying to their rock-and-roll–infused grass, I looked around and saw my festival friends frozen in time, only bigger kids and aggressive white facial hair reminding me that years have gone by.

I caught the bus a little farther up Watson Street this time, catty-corner from Lonesome Pine Drive, and reveled in the few minutes of complimentary A/C and saved steps on the hill up to the High Meadow tent on my way to catch AJ Lee. Clearly many others had been enticed by another reminder of the diversity in the bluegrass scene. AJ’s fierce mandolin playing, her charming stage presence, and ability to lead a band of hungry young pickers led to hot playing in the heat of the day. Not all of their music is fast, showing their laid-back California attitudes, but it’s all precise. Ballad-grass meets Django Reinhardt, leading to a mid-set standing ovation.

I took a much-needed late afternoon break before walking to the Catskill Stage for Jig Jam. Despite opening with the traditional “Good Old Mountain Dew,” this band’s original Irishgrass sound came through immediately. This was their first trip to Grey Fox after playing to critical acclaim at the Grand Ole Opry in 2023, yet how quickly everyone became an expert Irish dancer to their music in the dance tent. More heels were popping up at odd angles and rhythms than had since the clogging lesson earlier in the day. And why not? Jig Jam’s was a music that pulls those steps out of us. Oh yeah. As the novelty of the global distance wore off, what remained was stellar musicianship. And fun. These guys were as psyched to see us as we were to see them.

Time for the big guns. The Del McCoury Band. The man is an institution. Through my window on the bus, through the thousands of seated fans in front of the Mainstage under the early evening sky, I could see his coif of white hair and tan suit. Del is to bluegrass what Jerry West is to the NBA — the logo. He is unmistakable. Behind the Mainstage, most bands get golf carts to transport them to their tour buses, their campsite, or their next sit-in. Del and his band got sedans. I think they were left running. Yet it’s always so quiet backstage when Del McCoury plays; whether that is because of their old-school minimalist amplification on stage or because everybody who is backstage is watching one of the masters at work is unclear. After “Nashville Cats,” Del took some requests. I have a theory that he is never actually taking requests, just letting the crowd think they are influencing the band. Regardless, Del always has the crowd in the palm of his hand. As he is aging, his anecdotes and quips are looser, as is his playing. But his star, and that of the entire band, continues to burn as bright as the scene will allow. When Del invited Woody Platt onto the stage, who in turn re-introduced Del with the matter-of-fact statement that we were all enjoying the “best bluegrass band in the world. No question,” I had an answer to my question about The Steep Canyon Rangers from the night before. Woody had left the Rangers and was doing his own thing, including being an artist-in-residence at Grey Fox. My last Grey Fox had Billy Strings in that role, so Woody had quite the precedent to meet. Starting with his sit-in with Del and the boys was a pretty good introduction to Woody as a solo act, laying his own track and moving away from the Rangers’ prog-grass.

Is there anything prettier than three voices meant to sing together? I’m not suggesting that a perfect harmony of notes is necessarily the perfect ingredient, although it can help. Instead, it’s about three voices that go together like they were crafted with each other in mind. Where one’s gravelly tone ends, another’s horn-like sound begins, all offset by the scale running of the third. I remember hearing Crosby, Stills, and Nash as solo artists and realizing how the sum of the parts can equal more than the individuals. I’m With Her is approaching this level of sonic beauty. Their songwriting equally complements their sound, allowing them instrumental and harmonic space, emphasizing the moments of shared beauty. But tonight, I had two tired kids in tow and these beautiful ballads were landing like lullabies for my teens. It was down to the dance tent to try and create some energy for us.

We caught the tail end of AJ Lee’s set, a looser show than she’d played to the seated crowd in her afternoon Mainstage tent set. Grey Fox’s tradition of having more seated listeners than dancers is both comforting and unnerving. Often, I find myself in the back dancing around while adjusting lenses before making my way through the stoic seated section for pictures at the front of the stage. It’s reverent and disconcerting simultaneously. But never here at the Catskill Stage. AJ’s bluegrass rendition of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” started the refill of our energy reserves, but it was Woody Platt and The Bluegrass Gentlemen who really got us on our feet.

For Woody to open with “A Long Time Coming” was appropriate. This set has been a long time coming for me since I figured out he was the missing piece in The Steep Canyon Rangers last night and had seen him moving quickly from stage to stage, with his guitar case on his lap as his assigned golf cart driver wove through mid-set crowds so Woody could get to another sit-in. His harmonies with Del earlier in the evening notwithstanding, I was finally getting to hear the deep and playful baritone that was missing from The Steep Canyon Rangers. Woody had been bred for bluegrass and had been taken in by this knowing crowd years ago. He is part of the Grey Fox family.

The day ended in the same way it had begun; accordion-led, French-Canadian zydeco courtesy of Le Winston. The jams were stretched out and had more ska influence than I had heard before, causing more of the wooden dance floor to shake underfoot. But my feet dragged me back to the campsite. Before I could hear Jig Jam again, I was out under the cool, cloudless night, resting up for the last day of the festival.

Saturday

While the festival officially ends on Sunday, there are only a few musical events on the final day and we typically use that as a sign to pack up and get on the road. But before we could do that, we had one more day and the sun greeted us at dawn to let us know that she’d be there too. Instead of sleeping the morning away, we joined our friends next door, appropriately named “Camp Caution,” while the kids painted dancing bear tattoos on one another and schemed as to how they’d create their own path this day. Camps throughout Grey Fox have names and many work hard to occupy the same space year in and year out. I had noticed that the famed black, inflatable pig that typically had flown high above a particular camp in Picker’s Paradise was no longer a part of the skyscape. Ryan, Lancy’s husband and owner of one of the greater bushy, Lorax-like mustaches in the Catskills, told me how it had blown away twice in the past 7 years, before its owners realized that a pig flying may have been a sign. But the campsite remains, as do so many on the far side of Grey Fox. This year I didn’t even make my way into this other world, as I suppose many of the pickers didn’t see many sets, save for Del, through the weekend. So many folks come to the festival just to play. Bluegrass is such a systematic style that a bass player can happen upon a group of pickers, see his slot is empty, and join the melee, offering something that no one else is currently providing. For me, my day began with a meditation under the Catskill tent. How do you know you are in the Northeast without saying you are in the Northeast? Your guru leads meditation with a thick New England accent. The kids went to splash in the creek and after our mornings apart, we reconvened and ventured out.

I remember discovering Darol Anger’s askew approach to violin when he would sit in with String Cheese in the early part of the century. A master of the traditional sound of the instrument, Anger is also a playful innovator — stretching far beyond the violin’s music and giving it a symphonic personality appropriate for whatever context. While on stage with his latest quartet, Mr. Sun, Anger can be seen examining the space left by his virtuosic bandmates and filling it sparingly, but appropriately. With this band, I began to see how the Django Reinhardt sound was creeping into more than a few places in bluegrass, allowing for fingerpickers to remain complex, but to also strive for melodic rhythm, rather than overplayed dissonance. Was I the only person that applauded the announcement of a Danny Barnes cover? If so, surely I was the only one who appreciated how much the solos sounded Danny Barnes–approved. While Danny’s far-reaching interpretation of scales may not be what traditionalists under the Mainstage tent were hoping for, it was only a smattering of a set that reached deep into chord structures in audience-approved ways. Though, was it a coincidence that Mr. Sun’s cover of Danny Barnes didn’t have banjo? I bet Danny would have loved that irony. The set ended with a beautiful take on a lesser-known band, as jokingly introduced by Mr. Sun’s guitarist, an instrumental version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.”

The sun had climbed to its apex and I decided to walk down the hill to check out Unspoken Tradition because I’d heard tale of their hit “Dark Side of the Mountain.” Unspoken Tradition was nothing if not traditional and “Dark Side of the Mountain” had nothing to do with Pink Floyd. Despite a great cover of “Two Bucks in a Jukebox” with Woody Platt, I walked on as soon as Woody left the stage.

After more of the fishes and loaves scenario at the bus stop — no matter how many people were there, there was always a wicker chair for me — I got up to the Mainstage tent in time to catch some of the New Dangerfield’s set. While I had seen the bluegrass scene indirectly welcoming a more diverse crowd all weekend, this set was the most on-the-nose American diversity I’d seen at Grey Fox in years. This all-Black strings band reminded the nearly all-white audience that, while bluegrass may be a predominantly white musicians’ scene, the tradition of African-American strings music goes far beyond the time of bluegrass. This new version of this traditional style still incorporates the challenges of being African-American while simultaneously celebrating those hurdles that have been overcome by its predecessors. A song about Sidney Poitier perfectly balanced the successes and the need for more acceptance within its melodic music and challenging poetry, hauntingly capturing how Poitier lived his life with intention as a Black man. This and all other songs by New Dangerfield were complemented by the virtuosic banjo playing of Trey Wellington.

The heat had its grips on me and I chose to stay under the tent for Noam Pikelny and Friends’ set. This veteran of many bands has taken the reins as a true bandleader and, although his current band is not long in the tooth together, Noam’s intensive bandleading has quickly drawn these separate strands into a tightrope. But that can only be expected by a banjo player like Noam. From the school of Béla, he makes sixteenth-note trills seem effortless. Everything is in perfect time. The front three rows, seated on the grass in front of the rows of folding chairs, were treated to the intensive gaze Noam gives to each of the players in his band when they solo. He is looking into their souls and drawing what, musically, they are trying to offer so as to weave it into the fabric of the song as a true bandleader. While Noam’s deep voice screams to be heard as a vocalist, he limits himself mainly to the role of an instrumentalist and dry emcee for the band. It was fast-picking divinity.

As the afternoon wore on, it was beginning to smell like Grey Fox on a Saturday afternoon under the tent, so I made my way back to camp for dinner break. The traditional acknowledgment of a family meal is something that I will never fault Grey Fox for maintaining. Sure, you can find music on a secondary stage or in Picker’s Paradise during the meal break, but the decision to leave those slots open on the Mainstage and Catskill Stage lets the crowds know that an out-breath and breaking bread are part of what makes this experience so reverent.

Re-energized after a turkey sandwich out of the cooler, I went to the Catskill Stage to see the California Honeydrops. Although I am no purist, I still raise an eyebrow when I see drums onstage at a bluegrass festival. When the band has added horns, all semblance of the traditional bluegrass sound is typically long gone, as was the case with this set. An accordion sit-in was appropriate with the Dr. John–inspired sound of the Honeydrops. I moved on, as the back-and-forth between the Catskill Stage and Mainstage was going to be furious on this final evening. Leave it all out there, right?

While the energy needed to get up and down the hill repeatedly this final night of Grey Fox was tapping into my reserves, I appreciated the mental clarity that a ballad-heavy set from Sierra Hull gave me at the Mainstage. Sweetness came through in her style, her playing, and her banter. She told us about a song that she played because when she heard it, the song reminded her of her grandmother. Then she played a song she wrote about her grandmother! The familial connection bled out into the crowd and we were all so proud to see how far Sierra had come since her first trip to Grey Fox so many years ago.

Noam Pikelny may have been one of the few artists who didn’t change his sound based on coming to the Catskill tent. While his band continued to show their chops, it wasn’t until Woody Platt came out for the fast-picking “Crazy Heart is Driving Me Insane” that the dance floor filled and people’s energy grew. I had only just gotten to the dance tent when I had to then turn back around for Sam Bush’s set on the Mainstage. I should have caught a ride with Woody, as his golf cart screamed upward to give him a moment’s rest between sit-ins. As I walked backstage during Sam Bush’s set, I could not help but recognize the irony of three drum sets sitting in the middle of the unloading area with nobody seemingly understanding what to do with them next. I stepped to the back to take the whole weekend in. I had been so focused on seeing the diversity in the festival itself, I’d lost sight of the band that had brought me here. But Sam Bush, through his reggae-grass, reminded me of the original bluegrass-influenced jamband, the Grateful Dead, and put me back to wondering where they fell for the new generation of bluegrass musicians. A moment had barely passed for me to consider this thought when Woody Platt emerged from a nearby repurposed shipping container that now housed the backstage catering needs. After warming up on his axe, Woody sauntered up near enough and stood with me to admire Sam long enough for me to strike up a conversation with him about the Dead. He waxed poetic about how he’d been in college before discovering Jerry and the boys and credits the banjo player from Steep Canyon Rangers for making the introduction to one of the greatest forms of Americana in music. It occurred to me that an influence like the Dead may have let the Rangers know that including drums in their version of bluegrass would be accepted. It also occurred to me that, despite Woody’s current band returning to more traditional bluegrass instrumentation, sans drums, the way he structures his solos for his band and guests suggests that the allowance for experimentation outside of the traditional 12 bars is something that may have crept in when he first heard recordings of the Dead as a student in Chapel Hill.

Sam Bush is one of the most recognizable names in bluegrass for those of us immersed in the jam scene. He straddles both worlds with patience and grace with his island-infused sound, a few steps short of a full Margaritaville invasion, but armed with the same “no shoes, no shirt, no problem!” approach to his life and his music. He is inviting and happy, and his music is multifaceted and takes you on a journey. He can go from a traditional sound when joined by Woody Platt on “White Freightliner” to a reggae sound to his own balladgrass brimming with positivity and Buddhist tropes. This would be the last headlining spot I saw for the weekend and opened the return path to the Grateful Dead in a clearer and intentional way for me.

The Catskill Stage Super Jam did all it could to keep my attention as I labored home one last time. There were more fiddle players onstage at one point than I could count at that point in the weekend. But as I said before, bluegrass is a systematic music and too many spoons in the pot can lead to a bit of chaos. This would be offset by Sierra Hull, Trey Wellington, or Woody Platt leading the sound audibly or behaviorally, but ultimately my cup ran over by that point in the weekend and I happily walked back to the site for a decent night’s sleep.

Sunday

As is often the case, I woke up on Sunday at Grey Fox and began to wonder where the weekend had gone. Days had been full of the Grey Fox lifestyle, but as I packed up my car, it felt like it had come to a string-breaking halt. Still, as the kids and I drove out under the cool and cloudy skies of the eastern Catskills, we thought about how this would be a tradition we could no longer abandon. This was a family and we were part of it. The family had grown to accept newcomers, regardless of who they were or what they embodied, strengthening our scene and letting the world know that bluegrass and bluegrass-adjacent music has a scene of acceptance. Come to Grey Fox. You’ll feel it. See you on the farm in 2026.