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Folks keep coming back to MerleFest

Attendance appears strong despite faltering economy

Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll

Members of the crowd cheer for The Duhks at the Hillside Stage. MerleFest, a four-day festival, concludes today.

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By Tim Clodfelter | Journal Reporter

Published: April 26, 2009

WILKESBORO - Buoyed by clear skies and warm weather, MerleFest drew thousands of people to the Wilkes Community College campus this week.

Adam and Ann Hawkins from Winston-Salem were among the music fans attending this year.

Adam Hawkins said he has missed only one out of the past six MerleFests. But he had a good excuse for the one that he didn't attend -- Ann was in the hospital at the time, giving birth to their son Dixon.

Dixon, who turned 3 on Thursday, was there at MerleFest yesterday with his parents.

"He's been here every year of his life, except that first time," said Adam Hawkins, who is 31. "He loves any stringed instrument. He just loves music."

In addition to music stages around the campus and food vendors, the festival includes arts and crafts, games and activities for children, and tents filled with vendors selling musical instruments, CDs and DVDs, and more. Professional musicians took to the stages, and amateur musicians sat in the grass playing music, sometimes joining together for songs.

MerleFest started in 1988 as a one-time benefit concert to raise money for a memorial garden in honor of musician Eddy Merle Watson, the late son of bluegrass legend Doc Watson. Over the past 21 years, it has grown into a four-day festival. In 2008, it drew 76,750 people.

Final ticket sales for this year's festival won't be available until Sunday evening at the earliest, when the festival winds down. But Christie Hutchens, a MerleFest spokeswoman, said that the crowd has been steady over the first few days of the festival.

Advance ticket sales were down slightly from last year, something Hutchens said might have been caused by the economy.

But she believed that walk-up traffic had made up for that. The weekend's nice weather had encouraged a lot of people to show up, and Hutchens said she thought that the attendance numbers would be comparable to last year.

"Everything's going really well," she said yesterday afternoon. "We've had fantastic weather. Just a little storm coming through (Friday) night, but it didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits."

Johnny Jones, 56, a bluegrass and Americana fan from Hopewell, Virginia, has been attending the festival off and on since its fourth year. He said he has been impressed with how it has grown over the years.

He first became aware of the festival years ago when he saw Doc Watson talking about it on television and sought out the festival.

As much as he enjoys seeing such big-name performers as Watson, he said that he particularly appreciates seeing small jam sessions that take place here and there on the festival grounds.

"It's nice seeing kids just start to play with an 80-year-old guy," he said. "It's phenomenal how many great musicians are here."

Jones said that he had decided this year to cut back to two days at the festival, in part because of economic concerns. However, he definitely didn't want to cut the festival out of his schedule altogether.

John Searcy, 57, a singer-songwriter from Cincinnati, made the trip to MerleFest after hearing about it at other festivals. "The set up is great here," he said, adding that he was particularly impressed with the quality of the sound systems being used at the stages.

Chris Strickland, 28, from Columbia, S.C., had only been able to attend MerleFest once before, four or five years ago, but he enjoyed it. This year, his wife, Erin, bought them tickets for this year's festival for his birthday.

"The grounds seem nicer than I remember," Chris Strickland said. "This (festival) was a great one to come to."

MerleFest concludes today with performances by such acts as Missy Raines, BeauSoleil, Linda Ronstadt, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Gibson Brothers and the Nashville Bluegrass Band with Doc Watson.

For more information, go to www.merlefest.org or call 800-343-7857. Single-day passes for today are $40 and are available at the gate.

■ Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.