22 Sep Blues and Brews: Local Style
For many of us, the passage of summer is marked by Telluride’s Festivals. It begins with the excitement and anticipation of the Bluegrass Festival in June as school lets out and ends with the laid-back swagger of Blues and Brews in September as school resumes.
photo credit: Miles Galbo
Blues and Brews calls us back to the Town Park, and to the exact same place many of us started the summer. Only this time, yellow and brown patches mark the surrounding mountains instead of the greens of early summer. This time, the crowds are smaller and temperatures a little cooler. There is a familial buzz in the park.
Local families gather around the jumpy house and climbing spire, high-school students come to listen to a set after their fall soccer games and cross-country meets, and families dance, together. Like all of Telluride’s festivals, Blues and Brews carries with it its own persona. She’s casual and groovy and weirdly family-friendly.
She’s comforting like the deep amber of the fall beers she serves and mellow like the blues riffs that ground her. And she’s non-committal like the lovers that make up the content of most of her songs. She won’t get mad if you come and go.
Leave for a fall bike ride, come back in with the kids for a cold beer, Anders Osborne and some damn good fish tacos or dumplings. Have the sitter take the kids and stay for ZZ Top.
Return the next day and sit with friends as your kids climb the spire and rip through the jumpy castles then take them up front to see Taj Mahal’s fingers pick the banjo, swaying to the combination of blues, calypso and reggae and singing the familiar lyrics out loud.
Watch Sharon Jones passionately rip up the stage, referencing her fight with liver cancer as her inspiration to keep performing. Notice the suits and brass section of the Dap-Kings.
photo credit: Miles Galbo
Look up as the sun begins to set and kisses the surrounding mountains with a pink glow, illuminating the park, the crowd and the kids.
The blues resonating from the stage and the passionate performances on it anchor the scene. Stay later than you should on Sunday night, because you don’t want it to end—neither the Festival nor summer.
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