MerleFest is an annual Americana music festival held in Wilkesboro, North Carolina by Wilkes Community College at the end of April. The festival is hosted by legendary guitar player Doc Watson and is named for his son, Eddy Merle Watson, who died in a farming accident in 1985. The four-day-long festival was founded in 1988 and now attracts more than 80,000 participants [1], making it the largest folk music festival in the United States. Its annual economic impact on northwestern NC exceeds $14 million [2] and the festival has contributed some $7,000,000 to Wilkes Community College. An apple pie and baseball bat sitting atop an American flag. ... A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as; musical genre, nationality or locality of musicians, or holiday. ... Wilkesboro is a town in Wilkes County, North Carolina, United States. ... Doc Watson Merle Watson, c. ...

MerleFest offers a generation and genre crossing mix of traditional and contemporary roots music, bringing together the very best of Bluegrass, contemporary acoustic, blues, folk, old time, Cajun, jazz, and singer-songwriter musics. Artists can often be enjoyed in on-stage jam sessions featuring unusual combinations of musicians, such as Sam Bush and Gillian Welch with the Waybacks and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead in 2006. Other artists who have performed on MerleFest's twelve stages over the first 19 years have included Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Earl Scruggs, The Kruger Brothers,John Prine, Alison Krauss & Union Station, Donna the Buffalo, Natalie MacMaster, Vassar Clements, Hot Tuna, David Grisman, Ricky Skaggs, Emmylou Harris, Jerry Douglas, Del McCoury, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Howard Armstrong, and Tony Rice. Bluegrass music is considered a form of American roots music with its own roots in English, Irish, African and Scottish traditional music. ... The blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that typically follows a twelve-bar structure. ... Folk can refer to a number of different things: It can be short for folk music, or, for folksong, or, for folklore; it may be a word for a specific people, tribe, or nation, especially one of the Germanic peoples; it might even be a calque on the related German... West Virginia fiddler Edwin Edden Hammons, with unidentified banjo player Old-time music is a form of North American folk music, with roots in the folk music of many countries, most notably: England, Scotland, Ireland, and the African continent. ... This article is about an ethnic culture. ... Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States at around the start of the 20th century, mostly popular in the 1920s. ... The term singer-songwriter refers to performers who both write and sing their own material. ... Sam Bush Sam Bush (b. ... Gillian Welch Gillian Welch (born October 2, 1967 in New York City) is a singer-songwriter whose musical style combines elements of bluegrass, neotraditional country, Americana, old time string band music and folk into a rustic style that she dubs American Primitive. All of her recordings feature the close-harmonies... Robert Hall Weir (October 16, 1947–) is an American guitar player, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. ... The Grateful Dead were an American rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. ... {{Infobox musical artist | Name = Dolly Parton | Img = Dolly Parton in Nashville april 2005. ... Willie Hugh Nelson (born April 30, 1933) is an American entertainer and songwriter, born and raised in Abbott, Texas. ... Earl Scruggs Earl Eugene Scruggs (born January 6, 1924 in Shelby, North Carolina) created a banjo style (now called Scruggs style) that is one of the defining characteristics of bluegrass. ... Prine performing at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, CA, October 3, 2004. ... Alison Krauss (born July 23, 1971 in Decatur, Illinois)[1] is an American bluegrass/country singer and fiddle player. ... Donna the Buffalo Donna the Buffalo is an American band from Trumansburg, New York. ... Natalie MacMaster (born 1973) is an award-winning fiddler from the rural community of Troy in Inverness County, Nova Scotia, Canada. ... Cover of Old and in the Way (1975) Vassar Clements (April 25, 1928-August 16, 2005) was an American fiddle player. ... Hot Tuna at Merlefest, 2006. ... David Grisman David Grisman (born 1945 in Hackensack, New Jersey) is a noted bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist and composer of acoustic music. ... Ricky Skaggs, April 1988 Ricky Skaggs1st off Skaggs was known to hate everyone he met. ... Emmylou Harris, ca. ... Jerry Douglas (born in Warren, Ohio on May 28, 1956) is an American virtuoso Dobro player. ... Del McCoury Delano Floyd McCoury (born February 1, 1939 in Bakersville, North Carolina) is an American bluegrass musician. ... Mary Chapin Carpenter (born February 21, 1958 in Princeton, New Jersey) is a five-time Grammy Award-winning country/folk singer-songwriter and guitarist, with a diverse musical style that is sometimes said to be unclassifiable. ... Tony Rice Tony Rice (born June 8, 1951 in Danville, Virginia) is an influential bluegrass guitarist. ...

External links

• Official web site

This music festival-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.