Del McCoury has had a big year already. In February, he celebrated his birthday with the Grand Del Opry, which he characterized as “a great honor”, and his sons’ band The Travelin’ McCourys won a Grammy for their first album. “You know, last year we had a release party there at DelFest, cause that’s when we released their album and my album, I had one released too. And here, they got nominated for a Grammy and won it and I didn’t even get nominated! I told them, hey look, it’s the last record you guys are gonna make,” he shared laughing, admitting he feels proud of them, even prouder than when he won his own Grammys (he’s got three, mind you).
Del McCoury has an easy speaking voice, somewhere between the familiar consonant skips of my home (Baltimore) and the languorous vowels of the South, all aged and smooth as stone-iced bourbon. He tells stories, quickly familiar and honest. To say speaking with him is a pleasure does a disservice to the simple joy of listening to him talk – I could have sat there all day long and soaked in the musical history without having scratched the surface of what he remembers. Though he jokes, “Oh, when you pass 70, you forget things,” as an excuse for forgetting the name of a band that has come to DelFest, he remembers so much else it’s a miracle he has any space for new things.
Del started his own festival a little more than a decade ago, this year being the 12th in its history. Festivals have been around for a while now, serving myriad purposes across the ages – historically predominantly in order to bring more live music to more people than a concert would – with lots of people thinking the first major festival on record is the Monterey Pop Festival or Fantasy Fair, both in 1967. And of course, before that, Newport had both its jazz festival and its folk festival, both of which started in the 50s, arguably began the festival scene.
But just a few years before that, in 1965, The Blue Grass Festival happened in Fincastle, VA at the Cantrell’s Horse Farm. Put on by Carlton Haney, a famous promoter who also managed Conway Twitty, it helped spread and popularize the bluegrass gospel and establish a model for bluegrass festivals across the decades.
Del shared that he missed the very first Blue Grass Festival, but not the second, though he knew about it long before it ever existed. Carlton Haney managed Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys from 1953-1965, part of which included Del McCoury on banjo and acoustic guitar; Haney told Monroe all about it, and according to Del, “Bill told him that ain’t gonna work. You’ve got big ideas, he said…but it DID work.” From there, bluegrass festivals moved closer to many of the big cities, and that’s how bluegrass festivals “sprang up all over the United States.” For Del, “my band actually started with the bluegrass festivals, you know, the summertime festivals.” Those festivals – and bluegrass itself – spread across the United States, with a special emphasis on the cities with jobs, the factory cities: Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Columbus. Del explained that “a lot of my people are all from North Carolina, me and my wife’s people both are, and a lot of those people in that part of the country move to the northern cities for work because they were jobs” and they brought their music with them. So when all of the festivals started popping up, audiences pining for their home country could find it just a little closer to their adopted backyards.
Del personally developed a closer relationship with Baltimore, hailing from York, PA and cutting his playing teeth in Charm City. Many of his family even lived in the Middle River area “where a lot of hillbillies went to work” at the Martin factory. Over time, Del became friends with everyone in the scene, including Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys – “the first bluegrass band to ever play Carnegie Hall.” He worked in Baltimore before he even met Bill Monroe, though he played plenty of music, too. He recollected playing in Fells Point and around the city, laughingly sharing that when the longshoremen came back to town after being away for as many as six months, “well, they were not really, uh, well mannered guys.” Del explained that they during shows, when the longshoremen came into the bars, “they would get drunk and throw knives and shoot and do all kinds of things!” Certainly not the kind of experience most of relate to bluegrass concerts.
Which, of course, brings us back a little closer to the present day, a decade and some change since the first DelFest. When I asked Del about the idea for the festival, he credited Roy Conner of High Sierra fame for pushing him to start his own festival somewhere on the East Coast, even helping him and Stan Strickland – his manager – find a possible location.
“Me and Stanley, my manager then, came from Florida, and so we both flew and met him and the first place he took us to was the Rocky Gap, and I had played Rocky Gap before… then he said, “I’ve got another place to show you before we leave this area,” and he took us to the Cumberland, uh Allegany County Fairgrounds. And as we was walking around there, he says, “well now, I guess we should go – I want to show you some more…” I don’t know if we were gonna fly, or what we were gonna do that day so I said, “You know what, I’ve played a lot of outdoor festivals in my time, and this is as nice, or nicer than most – what I was looking at was just the location you know – cause it’s all level, it’s a charming city that place, ‘cause it’s right in the hills there, and you go overtop of the interstate and look down, and it’s just pretty – it’s a nice place to have a festival you know. We had already decided we’d bring our own stage in the race track. And they said “if you like this spot, we won’t go any further,” and that’s how we arrived at Cumberland.”
And they’ve been there ever since, once a year around Memorial Day weekend. Del emphasized from the first moment that the festival is for families and for the city of Cumberland, “We want to be part of the community and help the community, not drag it down or nothing. So we give back…every year we give back to the charities and we think that’s an important thing.” As part of that emphasis on community, the McCourys extend that to the greater community of musicians, running a music academy every year before DelFest begins, believing deeply in the importance of training the next generation of musicians. Del spoke with pride when he said he’s seen some of those academy musicians come up to become professional musicians themselves.
When it comes to professional musicians, it’s hard to come by a better lineup than the one fielded by DelFest. Del says the lineup is formed from a combination of he and his sons’ suggestions, Roy Conner’s suggestions, the influence of the fans, and almost as important, who’s available. This year, the lineup includes The String Cheese Incident, Trampled by Turtles, Tyler Childers, Railroad Earth (back for…their 10th time?), Sam Bush, I’m With Her, Billy Strings, Yonder Mountain String Band, Marcus King, The Steeldrivers, Sierra Hull, Larry Keel, Lindsay Lou, Front Country, Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen, and so many more.
And of course, The Del McCoury Band will play. And as he admits, he’ll “be running all over the place” to play with others, too. Heck, he might just crop up to say hello at the new Bloody Mary bar or check out the children’s section. Don’t be surprised if he shows up on the late night stage. It is, after all, DelFest.
Visit the Delfest website for more info on purchasing tickets, camping, and the full lineup and enjoy these photos from last year’s Delfest. Photos copyright and courtesy of Frank Thompson.
