Looking for bluegrass music? Where to find live concerts in Lexington this summer

A summer without bluegrass? Why, that’s hardly summer at all.

Still, our second June has come and gone without the Festival of the Bluegrass, Lexington’s foremost annual string music summit.

In 2020, it was among the first summertime festivals to cancel in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, cancellation came in the spring when recovery from the coronavirus for the summer months seemed uncertain. Of course, that was before it started to become more certain until it returned, more recently, to being less certain again.

So what to do now that summer is heading into the home stretch? Luckily, no Lexington festival in 2021 didn’t translate into no bluegrass at all, as it did last year.

There are several venues, concerts and, yes, two different festivals to keep bluegrass alive until the Festival of the Bluegrass rolls back to Lexington in 2022.

Here is a guide to where you will hear the strings sing for the rest of the summer and into the fall.

The WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour

We will focus on the return of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio in more detail next week. But the big news is the long-running, Lexington-based live music program is about to resume production. Its first audience taping at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, 300 E. Third, in nearly 17 months will feature a familiar name: Rhonda Vincent and the Rage (6:45 p.m. Aug. 16, $10). Regularly touted as the Queen of Bluegrass, mandolinist/vocalist Vincent and her band have been regular performance visitors to Central Kentucky (and WoodSongs) for several years. woodsongs.com

Southland Jamboree

Don’t let the name confuse you. Southland Jamboree indeed began as a series of string band performances outside a bowling alley on Southland Drive, but its steady growth and popularity triggered a relocation to a more spacious environment. Now settled at Moondance Amphitheater (1152 Monarch St.), Southland Jamboree stands as perhaps Lexington’s best summer supplier of local and regionally made bluegrass.

Still to come this summer in the series: Custom Made Bluegrass (Aug. 19), Blue Eagle Band (Aug. 26); Thursday Throwdown (Sept. 9), Fenced In (Sept.16) and Kentucky Wild Horse (Sept. 23). All performances are free. Showtime each evening is 7 p.m. southlandjamboree.org

The Burl

No, The Burl (375 Thompson Rd.) hasn’t become a bluegrass hangout. Still, world-class string music has always figured prominently in the Distillery District club’s Americana-leaning music mix. The acclaimed Asheville, N.C., band Town Mountain played a full weekend of outdoor shows there in July.

Among the bluegrass and bluegrass-related happenings heading to The Burl will be another Asheville troupe, Fireside Collective (8 p.m. Aug. 13, $12), a mini-festival headlined by longtime Central Kentucky favorites The Wooks (3 p.m. Aug. 21, $24) and the Durango, Colo., acoustic roots trio Stillhouse Junkies (8 p.m. Sept. 22, $12). theburlky.com

Railbird

Just as The Burl isn’t a bluegrass venue, Railbird isn’t a bluegrass festival. But the long-awaited sophomore outing of the two-day (Aug. 28-29) music outing at Keeneland will feature the return of arguably the most popular bluegrass stylist of his generation: Billy Strings.

The Michigan-born guitarist has been a staple of regional clubs for several years and was a show-stealer when he played an afternoon set at the modest-sized Burl stage at the inaugural Railbird in 2019. His Aug. 28 mainstage return to the festival will precede the September release of his new “Renewal” album.

General admission tickets for Railbird are $110 (single day) and $175 (both days). railbirdfest.com

The Old Guard of the New Grass

At the heart of a fertile progressive string band movement that began in the 1970s is music dubbed New Grass. Those that first gave identity to the style’s more jazz and jam directed sounds abandoned the tag years ago, mostly because their music went in so many different directions. Mandolinist/fiddler Sam Bush and banjo great/15-time Grammy winner Bela Fleck are two masters of the form, so much so that they gained notoriety decades ago as members of New Grass Revival. Both will be back in the region this fall with music that adheres to bluegrass tradition while remaining, by design, very forward thinking.

Fleck will be showcasing his first album of new bluegrass music in over 20 years, “My Bluegrass Heart,” with a performance at the Taft Theatre, 317 E. 5th St. in Cincinnati. His band will feature players a full string band generation removed from Fleck, including Sierra Hull, Michael Cleveland and Justin Moses (8 p.m. Sept. 29, $28-$48).

Fleck will then circle back to the region for an entirely different performance program at the Grand Theatre, 308 St. Clair St. in Frankfort. His Kentucky return (Fleck was a one-time Lexingtonian in the late ‘70s) will be a duet performance with wife and fellow banjo stylist Abigail Washburn (7:30 p.m. Oct. 30, $40-$55).

Bush, a Bowling Green native, played Lexington earlier this summer as part of the outdoor concert series at the Cardome Renaissance Center in Georgetown. That show boasted tunes by Buck Owens, J.J. Cale, Merle Travis and a bounty of Bush’s own electric and acoustic compositions. He will visit the region again to headline The Moonshiners Ball on Oct. 9 at Rockcastle Riverside, 4211 Lower River Rd., Mount Vernon. Tickets: $25-$140. The festival runs Oct. 7-10. tafttheatre.org; thegrandky.com; themoonshinersball.com

Concerts at the Castle

Think the Concerts at the Castle series at the Kentucky Castle (230 Pisgah Pike in Versailles) is strictly a summer event? Nope. Its performance schedule will reach well into the fall this year. Among the entries will be one of bluegrass music’s great veteran acts, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver (7 p.m., Oct 14; $45-$75).

Lawson isn’t a Lexingtonian, but he might as well be. His local history stems back roughly 50 years to early bands with Kentucky banjo colossus J.D. Crowe. Since forming his Quicksilver group in the early 1980s, Lawson has been a frequent performance flyer at the Festival of the Bluegrass and scores of local and regional music gatherings. thekentuckycastle.com

Poppy Mountain Music Festival

Don’t worry. The Poppy Mountain Bluegrass Festival (3715 US 60 East near Morehead) may have dropped a key word from its name, but don’t think for a minute it has forsaken bluegrass. In fact, string music artists – including several that usually play the Festival of the Bluegrass in June (including Russell Moore and IIIrd Tyme Out, The Grascals and Sideline) – will dominate the Morehead area event’s lineup between Sept. 9 and 18. It’s just that you’ll hear a few other sounds, as well – like the thundering electric country, blues and rock of the Kentucky HeadHunters (Sept. 17) and country music mainstay John Anderson (Sept. 18). Tickets: $20-$200. poppymountainmusicfestival.com.

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