Blues and Brews: Local Style

Blues and Brews: Local Style

For many of us, the passage of summer is marked by Telluride’s Festivals. It begins with the excitement and anticipation of the Bluegrass Festival in June as school lets out and ends with the laid-back swagger of Blues and Brews in September as school resumes.

photo credit: Miles Galbo

photo credit: Miles Galbo

Blues and Brews calls us back to the Town Park, and to the exact same place many of us started the summer. Only this time, yellow and brown patches mark the surrounding mountains instead of the greens of early summer. This time, the crowds are smaller and temperatures a little cooler. There is a familial buzz in the park.

FullSizeRender

Local families gather around the jumpy house and climbing spire, high-school students come to listen to a set after their fall soccer games and cross-country meets, and families dance, together. Like all of Telluride’s festivals, Blues and Brews carries with it its own persona. She’s casual and groovy and weirdly family-friendly.

IMG_3985

She’s comforting like the deep amber of the fall beers she serves and mellow like the blues riffs that ground her. And she’s non-committal like the lovers that make up the content of most of her songs. She won’t get mad if you come and go.

FullSizeRender

Leave for a fall bike ride, come back in with the kids for a cold beer,  Anders Osborne and some damn good fish tacos or dumplings. Have the sitter take the kids and stay for ZZ Top.

food

 

Return the next day and sit with friends as your kids climb the spire and rip through the jumpy castles then take them up front to see Taj Mahal’s fingers pick the banjo, swaying to the combination of blues, calypso and reggae and singing the familiar lyrics out loud.

Taj

 

Watch Sharon Jones passionately rip up the stage, referencing her fight with liver cancer as her inspiration to keep performing. Notice the suits and brass section of the Dap-Kings.

photo credit: Miles Galbo

photo credit: Miles Galbo

Look up as the sun begins to set and kisses the surrounding mountains with a pink glow, illuminating the park, the crowd and the kids.

FullSizeRender

The blues resonating from the stage and the passionate performances on it anchor the scene. Stay later than you should on Sunday night, because you don’t want it to end—neither the Festival nor summer.

FullSizeRender

No Comments

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.