Telluride Town Park, noon. June 24 – John Cowan’s familiar soaring voice fills the field this Sunday a.m. with “Amazing Grace,” “Jesus Gave Me Water” and “Dark as a Dungeon” and other “spiritual” favorites. After a blood-red sunset last night and smoke filtering into Telluride from a blaze near Mancos, attendees at the the final day of the 39th Telluride Bluegrass Festival were simply thankful for clear blue skies. Cowan has played this festival nearly every year since 1975, initially as a member of New Grass Revival, the seminal rocking bluegrass band and later as a solo artist.
The mood is quite different from last night’s party. The encore for the superb set by Cowan’s former bandmate, mandolin king Sam Bush, featured a ten-piece band including at least six bassists, We’ve seen mass clusterpicks of mandolinists and banjos and guitars here. With printouts of lyrics at their feet, the collective launched into “Big Bottom,” a wonderffully silly parody from the mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap.” The highpoint was watching McArthur genius award-winning classical bassist and composer going totally heavy metal with a bow and his 300-year-old doublle bass. Too cool.
The festivities concluded after midnight with a mesmerizing improvised set by Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers. The master pianist brought out banjoist Bela Fleck, mandolin whiz Chris Thile and Bush on fiddle ostensibly for a song or two and then kept them onstage working though Hornsby’s intensely complex jazzy songs.
The final day of the 2012 Telluride Bluegrass Festival is being streamed live on koto.org, Telluride’s community radio station.
Coming up: Joy Kills Sorrow (12 p.m.), Peter Rowan (1:30 p.m.), Brett Dennen (3:15 p.m.), Punch Brothers (5 p.m.), Glen Hansard (7 p.m.) and the once a year performance by the Telluride House Band (8:45 p.m.) featuring Bush, Fleck, Meyer, Bryan Sutton and Stuart Duncan.