Wilson Creek hosts bluegrass gathering
From left: Earl Justice, Harold Justice and Richard Starr play bluegrass music on Shirley Billings’ porch during last year’s Little Big Show in Wilson Creek.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
The Dills Family will perform at Bluegrass in the Park in Wilson Creek Saturday. From left: Carol Dills, Richard Weeks, Nicole Dills and Jim Dills.
The Lewis River Pickers will be at Wilson Creek’s first Bluegrass in the Park this weekend. From left: Merry Hart, Fred Hart, Becky West, Richard Weeks and Monique Larsen.
WILSON CREEK — Bluegrass in the Park is set to start today at Wilson Creek City Park. The inaugural event is set to bring music and visitors to one of Grant County’s smallest towns.
“I've been listening to bluegrass my whole life,” said the event’s organizer Shirley Billings, whose family band plays on their porch every year for the crowd at the Little Big Show. “My whole family plays bluegrass. And I just wanted to kind of get something for the community going. So I just invited all the people that I know and they’ll come and camp and jam.”
The camping is at Wilson Creek City Park, where folks are invited to set up a tent or park an RV at the perimeter. The city is turning off the sprinklers for the weekend so campers won’t get soaked, Billings said.
The fun starts Friday with “Pickin’ and Jammin’, Jammin’ and Pickin’,” an informal time hanging out in the park playing with whoever shows up. There will be more jamming from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Harvest Moon for those who just can’t get enough, Billings said. Saturday will be a bit more structured, starting with an open mic at 1 p.m. A band scramble, a kind of mix-and-match improvisation, will follow at 4 p.m.
“They just put their name and their instrument in a hat,” Billings said. “Then you pull one out and you make a band that may have never played together before. They get a little bit of time to practice together, and then they get up on stage and do their thing.”
Sunday morning will include gospel bluegrass music, starting at 9 a.m., Billings said, led by her family band.
Not everything will be impromptu. At 6:30 p.m. the Dills Family, from Montesano in southwestern Washington, will take the stage for a scheduled performance. Jim and Carol Dills came to Washington in 1980 from Oklahoma and North Carolina, Billings wrote in an email, and they perform with their granddaughter Nikole Dills and their friend Richard Weeks.
The Lewis County Pickers, also a southwestern Washington group, will also be there, Billings said. She reached out to Washington Bluegrass Association members and some may be there, she said, but no others had committed to appearing.
If that sort of informality is common with bluegrass musicians, it certainly is in the music. Bluegrass is a style that lends itself well to improvisation, Billings said. The instruments are simple, portable and relatively inexpensive, and the style is infinitely adaptable.
“It’s the kind of music where you can take any song you want to take and make it bluegrass,” Billings said. “I heard the other day on the bluegrass channel where someone had taken a rock song from back in the ’70s and they were remaking it in bluegrass style. Bluegrass is banjo, fiddle, guitar, dobro, mandolin, stand-up bass. They have accepted the electric bass, (but) mainly it's acoustic instruments.”
Billings is a transplant to Wilson Creek, having moved here from what she described as a busy place south of Olympia.
“My brother has lived here 25 years, but I moved over from the Lewis County area a couple of years ago. I stopped my job over there and I moved over here permanently. And I love it.”
Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.
