18 May Telluride Bluegrass 2026: East Nash Grass at FirstGrass & Main Stage!
The Telluride Bluegrass Festival announces 2026 lineup with top-to-bottom emphasis on world-class pickers.
Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gregory Alan Isakov, Larkin Poe, Shakey Graves, Flatland Cavalry, and more join a stellar string band lineup for this year’s festival, June 18-21, 2026, in Telluride, Colorado. And to open the weekend with a free concert, FirstGrass, in Mountain Village on June 17, is East Nash Grass, an up-and-coming musical sensation.
A select few tickets and camping pass options are still available at shop.bluegrass.com. For those making their first trek to Telluride—or if it’s been a while—the Planet Bluegrass team has laid out a helpful guide for first-timers right here.
Have kids and don’t know where to start in bringing them to their first (and favorite) music festival? This handy Telluride Bluegrass with Kids guide is here to make it fun for the whole family.
For everything else, please visit bluegrass.com.
Go here for more about the history of Telluride Bluegrass. (Back to 2009.)
And please scroll down to learn more about East Nash Grass, including a podcast.
Before any awards or national attention, East Nash Grass spent seven years playing every Monday night at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in East Nashville — a dive bar that became the group’s proving ground. That relentless weekly residency forged the tight musical chemistry, spontaneous stage banter, and fearless energy that now sets East Nash Grass apart on festival stages and in concert halls.
The outfit’s current lineup features Harry Clark (mandolin); Cory Walker (banjo); James Kee (guitar); Maddie Denton (fiddle); and Jeff Partin (bass/dobro), collectively alumni of acts including Dan Tyminski, Tim O’Brien, Sierra Hull, and Rhonda Vincent.
Each one of them arrives with serious credentials. Denton is a Grand Master Fiddle champion and now IBMA Fiddler of the Year. Clark is the 2022 IBMA Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year. Walker has toured and recorded with Sierra Hull, Tim O’Brien, and Ricky Skaggs. Kee and Partin have similarly deep roots in the tradition.
That level of individual mastery, channeled into a band where everyone has an equal voice, creates something genuinely electric.
Bottom line: in just a few years East Nash Grass has gone from a Monday night bar gig to winning IBMA New Artist of the Year, earning Entertainer of the Year and Instrumental Group of the Year nominations, charting number one on the Bluegrass Today’s Grassicana Chart, debuting at the Ryman Auditorium, and earning praise from Billboard, Rolling Stone, and The Bluegrass Situation.
That’s not a slow burn. That’s a rocket trajectory built on a solid foundation.
East Nash Grass clearly has the chops, the chemistry, the material, and the stage presence, building all of that for years.
The music industry is simply catching up to what the Monday night crowds at Dee’s already knew.
As for the groups third release, All Gods Children, the jury is in:
The Bluegrass Situation described the album “a joyful tribute to the many ways life gets good,” praising East Nash Grass for their “skillful traditional picking and a focus on diversity — both thematically and in the band’s tendency to share the spotlight at center stage,” ultimately delivering what the publication called “a truly spirit-satisfying album.”
Americana Highways praised the album’s “attractive playing” and vocals that are “rural, homegrown and smooth,” describing the overall sound as country music with no artificial sweetness — more hard cider than syrup.
Rolling Stone named East Nash Grass among the best they saw at RockyGrass 2025, praising their “rowdy set of high-octane bluegrass numbers” and calling the group “a rapidly-rising force on the national touring scene.”
The overall critical consensus is clear: All God’s Children is a confident, adventurous step forward that honors tradition while refusing to be confined by that space.
Find out for yourself when East Nash Grass opens Telluride Bluegrass weekend.
To learn much more, check out TIO’s podcast with Maddie Denton and Harry Clark.
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