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Author: Susan Viebrock

[click "Play" for Eamon McLoughlin interview]
Pressmini_vert02 According to Telluride Bluegrass Festival regular and Grammy winner Tim O' Brien it's all about recycling: he describes what he does musically as "making something new out of something old."

Tim is not alone. Linking the past, present and future is also what the relatively new band, The Greencards, is all about.

The aptly named Nashville-based trio – a green card identifies the bearer as an alien with permanent resident status in the United States – is comprised of two Australians, Kym Warner (mandolin. etc.) and Carol Young (vocals, bass) and an Englishman, Eamon McLoughlin (fiddle, violin, viola). The primary reason for moving to the States was to find opportunities to play their brand of high energy acoustic music not much in demand at home. Somewhat ironically, the group, which just opened shop in 2003, is already one of the hottest new bands in America, making distinctly American music.

13 June, 2009 /

[click "Play" to hear Paul Hoffman's interview] Greensky Bluegrass is the world turned upside down. Winning the Telluride Bluegrass Festival band contest three years ago was a world-upside-down moment for...

12 June, 2009 /
[click "Play" for Kristin Holbrook interview]

Intro:

IMG_1550 Who needs Andre Leon Talley when Telluride has Kristin Holbrook, fashionista/co-owner of local fashion emporium Two Skirts?

Kristin is a New Jersey native and graduate of the University of Virginia in English and Art History. After college, she spent three years teaching skiing in Vail, where she met her future husband Kevin, a broker at Peaks Realty. A year later, she moved to town. Within two years, in 2001, Kristin and Joanne Corzine had opened their store on Main Street, 127 West Colorado Avenue.

Two Skirts features fashion classics and the latest and greatest from New York – but only trends immune to altitude sickness.

Kristin will be posting a regular column for "Telluride Inside...and Out," "Fashion Friday."

12 June, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear WPA interview]

Wpa Flashback: Telluride Bluegrass Festival 2000. Sugar Hill Records had several oldies but goodies in the lineup. John Cowan was appearing with his new group, Lonesome River Band. Also on the scene were Seldom Scene, Jesse Winchester and Sam Bush. With Nickel Creek, the label also featured strong Gen Zeta talent.

Nickel Creek proved that the youth brigade was not all about skin-flashing and razzmatazz.  Two of the musical whiz kids in the new group were a  brother and sister act, Sean Watkins (2/18/77), guitar, mandolin, and vocals, and Sara Watkins (6/8/81), fiddle and vocals. Sean and Sara are back in town 10 years later for their encore at the 36th annual Bluegrass Festival, June 18 – June 21.  (Star fiddler Luke Bulla was also in town that year with Ricky Skaggs, another-wet-behind- the-ears superstar in the making.)

12 June, 2009 /
[click "Play" for Todd Snider interview]

Telluride Bluegrass, June 18-21

Pressphoto2 Telluride favorite, singer-songwriter Todd Snider, is returning to town for an encore after his sold-out show at the historic Sheridan Opera House, where the troubadour charmed the crowd with his barefoot brand of social satire and the way he managed to blow raspberries at our foibles without giving offense.This round, Todd is appearing on the Fred Shellman Stage at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Turns out folk hero Woody Guthrie came from an extremely prosperous upper middle-class family: dad speculated in real estate and mom owned about 30 rental properties. Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in the Midwest in Hibbing, Minneapolis, and also had solid middle class underpinnings. His father Abe, ran a sort of successful electric-appliance shop. All the stories about the young Robert being orphaned, running away from home annually starting at age 10, performing in a carnival were attempts by Bob Dylan to become Dylan.

10 June, 2009 /

[Click the Play button to hear interview with Tony Daranyi]

IMG_2756 The annual Telluride Farmers' Market is part of the change we can stomach.

Now in its seventh year, the Telluride Farmers' Market  features over 60 vendors, coming from a 100-mile radius to bring fruits, vegetables, flowers, meats, fish, and crafts to town every Friday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., June – October.

Over Memorial weekend, Telluride Mountainfilm hosted a symposium on food, and  screened the film "Food, Inc." The eat-your-brocolli message became clear: food does not come from shelves. Most of what Americans eat is supplied by agro-businesses that are no longer sustainable, but are government subsidized nevertheless. Small farms are not subsidized, but they are way more productive, netting, on average, $1,400 per acre versus $39 per acre for a farm of about 1,400 acres. Because they are so much less productive, larger farms need to pump their numbers through cost-cutting measures that translate into abuse for farm animals and mass distribution that abuses our environment.

09 June, 2009 /

[click "Play" button to hear David Allen speak about "The Challenge"]

IMG_0350 In 2003, Telluride local David Allen graduated The University of the South (Sewanee) in economics and environmental studies then promptly moved to Telluride to fish. The guide for Telluride Outside is still fishing, only now his primary target is no longer trout. It's disposable bags.

David is the engine behind an initiative of The Colorado Association of Ski Towns known as The Challenge, which sounds like a variation on the theme of the "X" Games but isn't. The Challenge is a competition of a different sort.

07 June, 2009 /

[click"Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Ted Hoff]

IMG_0793 In 2000, Telluride audiences saw the (now departed) Lizard Head Theatre Company's production of "Sylvia",  A.R. Gurney's hit comedy. The play is about a talking dog, part Lab, part poodle and entirely femme fatale. The comedy's all too familiar barbs about marriage, unspoken needs for connection, a sense of why we are here and feelings about out pets hit never failed to hit their mark: We have met the nut cases and they are us.

"Sylvia" was perfect for a town like Telluride which long ago went to the dogs. I personally know many grown-ups, including some of my friends, who get down on the floor with their canine darlings and shower them with terms of endearment such  as "sugar," "my beautiful angel,""pumpkin," and "sweetheart." They – okay, mea culpa, we –  spoil our furry friends with treats and marrow bones from Clark's. (A few – and don't ask me who – even stuff them with peanut butter once the marrow is gone, and stick them in the freezer to make doggie popsicles, guilt bones for when we leave them alone in the house.)

06 June, 2009 /

[click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Bill Frisell]

2009 Telluride Jazz Celebration, June 5-7

Frisell08_hires1 No doubt about it. Telluride Jazz Celebration impresario Paul Machado is really good at his job. His choice of Bill Frisell as the 2009 Guest of Honor was inspired, perfect for a time when the chips are down, when substance trumps style every day.

Soft spoken – literally, I had to ask him to speak up more than once in our interview –  and self-effacing and shy, Frisell is a man you might miss at a party; that is until he straps on his ax. Ax in hand, this "Clark Kent" quickly morphs into a Superman, arguably, quietly, the most brilliant and distinct voice to come down the pike in jazz guitar since Wes Montgomery, not coincidently one of Bill's idols. Ax in hand, the man is on fire. Bill claims performance is his drug of choice. It transforms him, allowing him to do things he would not do in real life. Performance brings out his inner Woody Allen. 

05 June, 2009 /