Sebastopol's Sonoma County Bluegrass and Folk Festival is this Saturday
A longstanding tradition and a whole lot of fun
Sebastopol has been home to many music festivals and traditions over the decades, and one of the most enduring is returning for its 23rd year this weekend on Saturday, March 8, at the Sebastopol Community and Cultural Center (SCCC).
The Sonoma County Bluegrass and Folk Festival will feature a full-day lineup of seven main stage acts, along with plenty of jamming, fiddle circles, impromptu workshops and lots of musical reunions.
Gone from Sebastopol’s annual music calendar are the Rotary Club’s Cajun Festival, Cloud Moss’s Celtic Festival and the long-running Kate Wolf Festival, which moved to Laytonville over two decades ago and is now shuttered.
But the partnership of the Sonoma County Folk Society and California Bluegrass Association keeps strumming along and has put together a top ranking of regional bluegrass, old time, Americana and acoustic performers, headlined this year by bluegrass matriarchs, Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick.
The festival will run from 12 noon to 8 pm, and all-day admission is $45. The SCCC’s Morris Street location offers plenty of parking, and food, beverages and musical merchandise will be available for purchase.
The festival marks several milestones and anniversaries. March 8 is also International Women’s Day, adding to the honors of having Lewis and Kallick playing together on the same stage. This will be the 50th year the two performers have been performing in the San Francisco Bay Area, since both started their bluegrass careers in 1975 in the all-woman group, Good Ol’ Persons.
This is also the 40th anniversary of the Sonoma County Folk Society where folksinger Kate Wolf was an original board member. And this year is also the 50th anniversary of the California Bluegrass Association (CBA), currently led by Petaluma resident Ted Kuster.
“Tell everybody to bring their instruments, no matter how rusty they are,” Kuster invited. “I know we are a mostly ‘listening festival’ but what happens on the stage is just the tip of the iceberg.”
A mostly local audience is expected, said Kuster, but he also pointed out that the CBA membership features both retirement-age members and a very active young student camp program that hail from zip codes as disparate as Bakersfield to Redding. “We are very aware that the future of the bluegrass art form depends on jamming and not just today’s headliners,” said Kuster.
Other groups performing this year include Broken Compass Bluegrass, Mission Blue, Salty Sally, Chad Manning Music (students and teachers), Lonesome Ace Stringband and Late for the Train, a trio from Toronto in their final stop of their current California tour. Opening at 12 noon will be an all-female trio, “Butter Bird,” that Kuster says sounds a lot like Emmy Lou Harris, a Hardy Strictly Bluegrass Festival favorite.
Lewis and Kallick arrived to the Bay Area in the 1970s by different routes, and both have been at the center of northern California’s “progressive bluegrass” or “Newgrass” scene ever since. Besides their recordings as Good Ol’ Persons in 1975, the two have also recorded together on the 1991 “Together” album and most recently in 2014 with “Laurie and Kathy Sing the Songs of Vern and Ray,” a tribute to California bluegrass legends Vern Williams and Ray Park.
At the Sebastopol festival, they will be joined by fiddler Brandon Gagner and Christine Wilhoyte on banjo with Kallick on guitar and Lewis moving to bass to show off some of her special “smooth licks” on the biggest member of the fiddle family.
Lewis, now 74, is a California bluegrass fiddle champion and has led many bluegrass ensembles over the decades, including The Right Handsn and has played with such musicians as Nina Gerber, Tim O’Brien, Barbara Higbie, Tom Rozum and many others.
Her most recent collection of music, “Trees,” was released in 2024 on her own label, Spruce and Maple Music. Lewis is a native of Long Beach.
Kallick, age 72, is a Chicago native who made her way to Northern California in 1975 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, where she discovered bluegrass. Soon, she joined Lewis in the all-woman Good Ol’ Persons that also featured Barbara Mendelsohn, Dorothy Baxter and Sue Shelasky.
Later versions of Good Ol’ Persons would eventually include John Reischman, Sally van Meter, Todd Phillips, Paul Shelasky and others. Kallick’s most recent recording is “Lonesome Chronicles” where she fronts her own Kathy Kallick Band.
Besides the touring Canada-based Late For the Train trio (playing 3:45 pm on Saturday), this year’s other performers all hail from northern California, stretching from Pacifica to Grass Valley.
Another all-female act on March 8 will be Salty Sally (playing Saturday at 2:40 pm), a quartet of young women (ages 15-18) from the Oakland School for the Arts. The women are classically trained but devote their multi-instrumental and vocal skills to bluegrass, folk, country and jazz. “Salty Sally has been a hit at recent major music festivals and music camps.
Mission Blue (12:45 pm) is a traditional bluegrass group from Pacifica led by father-daughter A.J. and Dana Frankel. On mandolin these days is Graton’s own David Theissen who learned his bluegrass chops at People’s Music on Main Street Sebastopol as one of the original Mighty Chiplings and a student of Chip Dunbar.
Broken Compass is returning to the Sebastopol festival for a second year and have played other Sonoma County venues in recent months. The quartet plays plenty of traditional bluegrass songs, but are also known to “stretch out” in longer Grateful Dead-style instrumental jams.
“People will really enjoy Lonesome Ace Stringband,” said Kuster. “They play old-timey, but they are high energy and they do a lot of humor bits.” (Lonesome Ace plays at 4:50 pm.) Kuster said he would have trouble picking out other favorites from the festival lineup. “Ticket sales are going good, but we won’t be a sell-out, so people should definitely come.”
Part of the day’s festivities will be a large group “Singer’s Workshop,” inviting all ages and talent levels. This mid-day workshop will be indoors at the Youth Annex on Morris Street.
For more information and advanced tickets visit https://californiabluegrass.org.
The festival is also being supported by Sebastopol Kiwanis, Loveland Violin Shop, Out West Garage the California Coast Music Camp, and The Stanroy Music Center.
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