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.

It was the biggest and best small festival I have ever attended. There, I said it. I have started with a boom; a writer’s biggest mistake. There was no building to this statement. The opportunity to hook you with subtlety and humor was lost. If you stop reading now, I have only myself to blame.

Last year I wrote a preview for a festival I had never attended. This year I write a demand for anyone who considers themselves fans of bluegrass. Go to Grey Fox!For 37 years, this festival has been doing it right. It’s the total package.

There were bigger, more well-known happenings this past weekend. So what was I doing in the middle of a pasture, in a 1975 Apache Mesa, covering the Grey Fox Music Festival? I was going through initiation. You see, this isn’t a festival. It’s a family; a tight knit group of Northeastern hippies, strict grass fans, old party hounds, their new-picking offspring and countless other factions who are represented in this family-friendly, hard partying, yet responsibly sustaining event.

If you are into small crowds for big acts, organic and local cuisine, comfortable camping and world-class bluegrass, old time roots and dance music, then read on about the Grey Fox Festival in Oak Hill, NY from July 19-22. For the 36th year, one of USA Today’s “top places to see bluegrass” returns to the comfortable confines of the Catskills with a Who’s Who of Bluegrass on the line-up.