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Bluegrass fest, 45 years young, returns to Salem County Fairgrounds

With its farms that produce Jersey corn and tomatoes, Salem County has a rich agricultural history. It's an appropriate location for the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival, which has set down roots at the Salem County Fairgrounds in Woodstown, N.J. Now in its 45th year, the festival returns Friday through Sunday with a lineup that features Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, the Steep Canyon Rangers, and Claire Lynch.

With its farms that produce Jersey corn and tomatoes, Salem County has a rich agricultural history.

It's an appropriate location for the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival, which has set down roots at the Salem County Fairgrounds in Woodstown, N.J. Now in its 45th year, the festival returns Friday through Sunday with a lineup that features Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, the Steep Canyon Rangers, and Claire Lynch.

The festival's banjos, mandolins, and guitars make it a site ripe for the picking. "There should be a rural component to a festival like this," says festival director Carl Goldstein of Hockessin, Del. "The basis of the music is rural in nature, and a more bucolic setting helps in framing the feel of the event."

In late August, the 2015 festival was nominated as event of the year in the annual awards competition administered by the International Bluegrass Music Association.

The festival began in Delaware with the formation of the Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music and a goal to present traditional American folk music with a focus on Appalachian music, according to Goldstein.

Bluegrass pioneer Ralph Stanley performed at the group's first concert in January 1971 and was a catalyst for the festival.

"Ralph and Bill Monroe asked us later that year if we would host the first bluegrass festival in the Northeast United States," says Goldstein, 77, a lawyer and retired Delaware Superior Court judge.

Initially known as the Delaware Bluegrass Festival, the first one was held in 1972 at the KOA Campground in Bear, Del., and drew about 1,000 people, with Stanley and Monroe topping the bill, Goldstein says.

Always held on Labor Day weekend, the festival settled to Gloryland Park in Bear from 1973-89 before moving to its current home in Salem County in 1990. About 6,000 people are expected this year.

The 20-acre fairgrounds provides ample space for camping. "They've been wonderful in accommodating us," Goldstein says of the fairgrounds staff.

The music continues after each day's performances. "There is an awful lot of jamming in the campsite," says Brian Duffy of Elsinboro, N.J. He's a festival organizer who has played at the festival with the Tuesday Mountain Boys.

The festival has presented some of the top names in bluegrass, with Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys appearing 10 times, Lester Flatt and Nashville Grass (five times), and Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives (three times). Others include Merle Travis, Doc Watson, and Guy Clark.

Artists can team up for memorable performances. That was the case when Monroe and Watson played a six-song set together at the 1990 festival. A YouTube video of the performance posted in 2012 has been viewed more than 121,000 times and shows their easygoing chemistry.

A 14-person board selects the acts for the festival.

"You want a mix of styles," Goldstein says. "We like to introduce new acts alongside more established ones. We presented Alison Krauss [with Union Station] when she was a teenager" in 1989.

Over the years, the festival has aimed to be diverse, mixing in Cajun and western swing acts. "We try to present bands with women and women who are bandleaders," adds Duffy.

This year's festival will be bittersweet, given Stanley's death at 89 in June. He performed a record-setting 18 times at the festival, most recently in 2014.

Skaggs, a former member of Stanley's backing band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, will perform a tribute to the man he calls his "mentor and so much more."

"We'll probably fine-tune our set once we get there," says Skaggs, who will perform with Lynch and Dale Ann Bradley for the tribute. "We've always included Ralph's songs in our set, but we've been doing more since he died." Skaggs will play a mandolin used by Pee Wee Lambert, who played with the Stanley Brothers.

Hillman, an original member of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, will be making his first appearance with Pedersen in Woodstown since 2005. "We usually have a great response playing festivals because we're different, being a duo and not a band with banjo. It presents a different musical experience."

The festival lets Hillman, 71, who began as a teenage mandolin player with the Golden Gate Boys in 1962, return to his bluegrass roots. "I cover songs from every band I was in, beginning with the Golden State Boys [later the Hillmen] through the Byrds and Burrito Brothers, Desert Rose Band, and tunes from my solo albums."

For Goldstein, who has attended every festival, the event has succeeded his expectations. "We had no goal upon starting," he says. "We just hoped to get through the first year or two."

Thoughts of a golden anniversary have entered his mind: "We are in the beginning stages of thinking about a real celebration for our 50th but nothing concrete at this point."

The Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival will be held Sept. 2-4 at the Salem County Fairgrounds, Route 40, Woodstown, N.J. Information: delawarevalleybluegrass.org, 302-321-6466.