Along with co-headliner Railroad Earth, Greensky Bluegrass will join 30-plus acts at this weekend’s Hoxeyville music fest in Wellston. Check out the full performance schedule and listen to a new Greensky tune.
Greensky Bluegrass banjo whiz Mike Bont views the annual Hoxeyville music festival as a “camping trip” with friends – a place to hang out with a bunch of talented musical comrades.
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“Hoxeyville for me is the one time to go camping in the woods,” he told Local Spins. “Everybody from Michigan just goes up north and hangs out for the weekend. It’s my one time of year where I can … have one-on-one conversations with friends of mine and musician friends.”
The festival – set amid the picturesque Manistee National Forest in Wellston – also happens to be where the Kalamazoo-based Greensky Bluegrass shines as the featured headliner every year. For 2016, the nationally renowned, progressive bluegrass band will hold court with two straight sets on Saturday night.
Hoxeyville, Bont said, is “like a Kalamazoo away game” for Greensky Bluegrass, which already has savored a milestone year with sold-out shows at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium and Colorado’s spectacular Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
The band rolls into the weekend festival on the heels of premiering the first single, “Past My Prime,” from Greensky Bluegrass’ upcoming new album, “Shouted, Written Down & Quoted,” which gets released on the band’s Big Blue Zoo Records label in late September. (Listen to the new song via Billboard here.)
Of course, Hoxeyville brims with rootsy, mostly Michigan-based talent with more than 30 acts playing two stages over three days.
This year, big names like New Jersey newgrass band Railroad Earth – which headlines Friday night – Colorado folk faves Elephant Revival and North Carolina folk duo Mandolin Orange share stages with Michigan-bred stars such as the Joshua Davis Quartet, Billy Strings, Luke Winslow King, The Crane Wives, Sweet Water Warblers, The Accidentals, Airborne or Aquatic, Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys, The Go Rounds, Eggs Bernard & The Electrons, Soul Patch and many more.
And like Greensky Bluegrass, many of these acts will be rolling out new music for the 2,000-plus festival-goers, including Soul Patch, Seth Bernard, Joshua Davis, Billy Strings and May Erlewine.
One big change for 2016: Hoxeyville is now a “B.Y.O.B.” event and will no longer have a beer tent, with festivalgoers required to bring in only canned beer – no glass.
Impromptu campfire performances add to the appeal factor for musicians. Bont said there’s usually a “big jam” on Thursday before the festival officially begins, often with the likes of Billy Strings, Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys and others taking part.
“It’s pretty fun,” he said. “Usually at festivals, we’re like two ships passing in the night (with other bands). It’s nice to be able to connect with our musical friends and do some jamming.”
The festival comes after a busy summer and completion of Greensky Bluegrass’ new album, which was recorded at two studios – the instrumental tracks at Echo Mountain Recording Studio in Asheville, N.C., and most of the vocals at a remote studio in Nederland, Colo.
Bont said the album represents a “continuation” of the musical growth demonstrated on 2011’s “Handguns” and 2014’s “If Sorrows Swim.”
“It shows a lot our growth in our songwriting as well as the studio process,” Bont said, noting that mandolinist Paul Hoffman and guitarist Dave Bruzza “bring tunes to the table and we Greensky them. We just try to make the tunes kind of our own.”
A fall tour in support of the new album will see the band “playing a lot of songs we’ve never played before,” Bont said.
The banjo player acknowledged that the band formed in 2000 has come a long way from the days when it was “a bunch of dudes in a stinky, small van” traveling the country. Greensky Bluegrass now boasts a high-tech light show, capacity crowds at its shows, and glowing national media attention from the likes of Billboard, Rolling Stone magazine and JamBase.
“It’s been a really good summer,” Bont said, citing the enthusiastic, sold-out audiences at the iconic Ryman Auditorium and Red Rocks Amphitheatre. “I’m still amazed at the whole thing. A lot of people traveled to see us. All in all, it’s been a pretty great summer.”
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