A reprieve from the rain led to a perfect day in downtown Ridgefield on Oct. 2, as the sounds of bluegrass filled the streets during the city’s annual joint celebration of music and nature.
Saturday’s Birdfest and Bluegrass event brought together musicians from across the region who congregated in Ridgefield to take part in impromptu jams, or to watch the performers show off their skills.
Put on by the city and the Friends of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, most of the activities remained virtual after last year’s event took place remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, music made its return to downtown, alongside the city’s usual First Saturday vendor market at Overlook Park.
Alongside scheduled acts at Ridgefield Craft Brewing Company, the Ridgefield School District’s maintenance building and inside Sportsman’s Public House, a number of designated “picker/jamming” locations provided set sites for musicians to play together.
“What a beautiful day in Ridgefield here,” Vancouver resident Jon Rand said.
Rand brought his upright bass to town to take part in the festivities, playing in front of food carts at the “Carts By the Park” off of Pioneer Street.
Rand originally started out playing Hungarian and Transylvanian music, but took up bluegrass because of its popularity in the area.
“I moved to the Northwest and bluegrass is what I found,” Rand said.
Saturday was Rand’s first large bluegrass event and his first time in Ridgefield. He learned of the event on a bluegrass-focused website. He said he meets up with other members of the genre’s community on a weekly basis to take part in playing on a smaller scale.
“What we’re doing here is what we normally do. We jam,” Rand said.
Coming from further away for the event was one of the younger players that day, 16-year-old Nate Hendricks from Clatskanie. He heard about the event from Sportsman’s sound engineer, and brought his banjo and mandolin to Ridgefield.
Hendricks first tried his hand at bluegrass after he found his grandmother’s banjo in a closet. He said the ad hoc nature of bluegrass is what keeps him playing.
“The thing about bluegrass is there’s really not much care for what your other job is,” Hendricks said. “You’re just there for the music.”
