Photo from Black & Bluegrass Productions.
It’s punk! It’s metal! No, it’s—bluegrass?! Well, it’s somehow all three, and that’s how Dan Rae likes it.
You’ll have a chance to listen to a whole evening of riotous bluegrass at this year’s Black & Bluegrass Festival at Rideau Pines Farm on September 16.
Black & Bluegrass isn’t your grandpa’s bluegrass fest—unless your grandpa was the local moonshiner/bar-brawler/town tough. For Rae, who has run this festival for nine years, Black & Bluegrass represents “the rowdier side of bluegrass, but also hybrids of punk rock, a little metal, psychobilly.”
“Basically anything with a stand-up bass, we’ll play,” says Rae.
Fans at Black & Bluegrass 2022. Photo from Black & Bluegrass Productions.
Rae is a musician himself—he fronts the band Bastards and the Buzzards—with a punk and metal background. He says he wasn’t much of a country guy, but was drawn towards rowdy bluegrass music that shared the “ideals” of punk and metal. After catching shows by acts like The Devil Makes Three and The Goddamn Gallows, Rae decided to start his own like-minded music fest.
He connected with Myke Pulito from Oshawa, who fronts a band called Hairy Holler, a “rowdy tavern drinking band,” and who had his own outlaw country and folk-punk contacts. It snowballed from there. Like most years, 2023’s festival pulls from Rae’s big roster in a close-knit scene.
Photo from Black & Bluegrass Productions.
Rae gives all proceeds he makes to the performers.
Black & Bluegrass has two stages, a main stage for bands and a second stage for duos and solo acts, so people can bounce back and forth without a gap in the party. The outdoor setting is what Rae has always wanted, although he found great success in past years at the Rainbow Bistro.
Although a lot of traditional bluegrass music “is about drinking and partying, really,” says Rae, he admits there’s a bit of a wall between the purists and the fusion acts he associates with. He hasn’t had a straight bluegrass band perform yet.
“[The bands] are usually mixed with something,” he says.
Festival founder Dan Rae and Asjia Papineau, aka Bastards and the Buzzards. Photo from Black & Bluegrass Productions.
But the connection between punk and bluegrass runs deeper than just “drinking and partying.”
“I think it comes from blue-collar people. People break their backs all day and they come home and they have whiskey with their buddies and complain about work. That’s a big part of where it all comes from,” says Rae. “It’s just a whole bunch of regular people trying to live their lives.” Whether it’s electric guitar or banjo—or both!—it all draws from the same well.
And yes, Rae confirms that you can mosh at a bluegrass show. So work on your high lonesome holler and old-time breakdowns, and keep those elbows up!
Black & Bluegrass Fest 2023 is happening on Saturday, September 16, at Rideau Pines Farm (5174 Fourth Line Road). Tickets are $40 in advance or at the door. Doors open at 2pm, music starts at 3pm.
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