Music

The Aspen Community Bulletin Board Announces Festivals and Events in Downtown AspenSummertime in Aspen is synonymous with a jam-packed festival season. As Memorial Day fades into a distant memory, Aspen’s summer high season is beginning to peep its head around the corner. The highway switchback over Independence Pass is open, eateries have lined streets and patios with tables and chairs for dining al fresco, impromptu ultimate Frisbee games are taking place in Paepcke Park, and jeans and boots are being shed like rattlesnake-skin for swimsuits and flip flops. All are surefire signs of summer in the Rockies.

Sam Bush
Bluegrass at Base Village: Sam Bush discusses Aspen, Bluegrass, The Summer of Love, and being a Kentucky Colonel.

Bill Monroe, the late mandolin-pickin’ granddaddy of modern bluegrass, once described his beloved genre as “Scotch bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound. It's plain music that tells a good story. It's played from my heart to your heart, and it will touch you. Bluegrass is music that matters."

Bluegrass matters because – much like jazz – it is deeply rooted in the nitty-gritty of the American experience. It’s a genre of colloquial homespun lyrics, plucky melodies, and tight, breakneck acoustic riff. Bluegrass has a certain rustic nostalgia and rural romanticism, serving as an apropos soundtrack for a sequestered high alpine town like Aspen. Dust back the pages of Aspen’s history a century or so and it is easy to envision the scene: motley and haggard silver miners sitting around a fire, drinking whiskey, and strumming at a weathered banjo while crooning a Stephan Foster song after a long day in the craggy underbelly of Smuggler Mountain.

“At the end of the day, looking out on 15,000 people from the side of the stage…that energy makes it worth it every night.” Thought not an official rock star, BellyUp General Manager Kimberly Kuliga has lived a rock and roll lifestyle.