“There’s this undercurrent of bluegrass in Clark County,” Samantha Zeiner, director of operations for the Friends of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, told The Reflector.
Since 2000, Ridgefield has celebrated the Birdfest and Bluegrass Festival.
The Friends put the festival on to educate residents and visitors about the refuge, local flora and fauna, and local culture. Bluegrass music has played an important role in the festival since inception. Every year, bluegrass musicians convene around town for jam sessions and formal performances.
On Oct. 3, a blue-skyed autumn Saturday, musicians of various ages and abilities gathered beneath the pavilion at the Ridgefield skate park for the Bluegrass Music and Pickers Festival.
Among them was Tim Dawdy, who has been part of the festival since 2000. Beside the pavilion, he used flashing steel fingerpicks to strum a dobro — also known as a steel guitar. He has played the dobro for 30 years and has lived in Ridgefield since 1993.
Al Wilmoth has been playing his own guitar for 65 years and jamming at the festival for seven. He travels from Kelso to attend.
Both agree that bluegrass is just a label given to folk music, which can vary depending on who you ask, and where. It may or may not involve mandolins, guitars, banjos and upright basses. Really, the point isn’t to define it; it’s to do it.
“The point of bluegrass is for people to participate,” Dawdy said. “We’ve become a passive society … We look at screens. We don’t really do anything.”
According to Dawdy, playing music with other people is the antithesis of that. It requires you to get involved, to socialize, to do something real.
When asked what he likes about the festival, Wilmoth gestured to the street of milling people, the musicians under the pavilion, twanging and humming, singing “Wagon Wheel” together.
“This,” he said. “This is all the reason I’m here.”
Learn more about the festival at ridgefieldfriends.org/birdfest-bluegrass.
