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The Down County Jump festival headliners are, from left, Tony Trischka, Bruce Molsky and Michael Daves.
Provided
Trischka, mentor to Bela Fleck, broke the banjo world open by combining traditional Scruggs style with jazz and pop. Molsky is known as the foremost exponent of old time fiddling, while Daves is highly regarded as one of the best proponents of bluegrass guitar.
In a phone interview, Daves distinguished between styles they will play. “Old-time predates bluegrass. There’s very little improvisation, and it’s most often instrumental fiddle tunes. The fiddler leads the melody, plays it repeatedly, and everyone finds this amazing groove.”
“Old-time musicians tend to be more straightforward about the melodies, whereas bluegrass musicians tend to use those traditional melodies as a jumping-off-point for improvisation. Tony and Bruce play at such a high level. There is a musical conversation that encompasses so much musical understanding and finds common ground,” he added.
Down County Jump returns to Race Brook Lodge June 13 and 14.Provided
Scholarly in his knowledge yet down to earth, Daves grew up in Georgia, was raised by musician parents, and attended Hampshire College in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts where he studied with jazz maestro Yusef Lateef.
Though he tours the world with high profile musicians like mandolinist Chris Thile, Steve Martin, and The Steep Canyon Rangers, Daves now lives in Adams, Massachusetts, having relocated there with his wife, luthier Jessi Carter from Brooklyn several years ago.
In addition to performing and recording, Daves teaches guitar and bluegrass singing. He’s inspired by the “high lonesome” bluegrass sounds of legendary artists like Del McCoury, Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley.
“There’s an openness to their sound. It’s intense with mournful bluesy wailing and smearing, sliding notes over a breakneck speed. It borrows from African American traditions like blues and gospel and mixes with Appalachian ballad styles, which has roots in the British Isles. It’s a uniquely American form from people who were listening to one another for centuries.”
The Down County Jump will be his first show at Race Brook Lodge. For tickets and information, go to: rblodge.com
A rock shelf formation on the private stream. This kind of terrain creates excellent cover for trout.
Patrick L. Sullivan
I’m working on that.
A few days before Memorial Day I was whiling away an idle hour or two on the Blackberry.
From the bridge at Beckley Furnace I observed a fellow fly-caster. We acknowledged each other, and after a couple casts he called up “Got any tips?”
I scrambled down. He was Andrew Stone of Illinois, with a teenager at one of the private schools.
I gave him the little mini-bugger I have been using with considerable success in recent years and almost immediately he was on a fish.
This was very good for my ego.
Andrew Stone netted a trout on the Blackberry in May, thanks in part to some stellar advice from yours truly.Patrick L. Sullivan
In the last week of May I went on my first solo trip to the private fishing club water. I had my button proclaiming my status as a paid-up member attached to my hat. On advice from the club president, I also made an enlarged photocopy of said button and left it on the dashboard.
The club has an arrangement with property owners along the medium-sized stream. Three members of this particular family drove by at various times, with much waving and tooting of horns.
Armed with an old Orvis seven and a half foot four weight with a slow action and a 10-foot Tenkara rod tucked in my pack, I slithered downstream along surprisingly slick cobble, swinging a team of traditional winged wet flies below me.
Nothing happened.
Then the stream took a hard left into a long shelf formation, and here I struck gold.
Alertly noticing the casings from a bug called isonychia on the streamside rocks, I changed over to a Leadwing Coachman winged wet fly on a dropper under an iso dry fly.
I like isos. They are big, and their imitations are big too. I can see them to tie on.
Isos are also good swimmers, so instead of obsessing about the perfect drift, I can put some English on them, especially the subsurface versions.
There are typically two rounds of isonychia in the streams I frequent in New York and Connecticut. The first starts around the beginning of June and seems to taper off as July approaches.
Then it all starts again in August, and runs for a couple months. I have caught fish in the Esopus and Housatonic in late October on iso imitations.
The first brown nabbed the wet fly, and a few minutes later another sportingly took the dry.
The first brown trout from the private fishing club stream looks much bigger than it was because I deliberately brought my smallest net.Patrick L. Sullivan
After an unfortunate encounter with some knotweed I switched over to the DragonTail Talon Mini 310, which is a fixed-line rod with a slow action that fishes at 10 feet and packs down to 12 inches when collapsed, which means it can be stuck in a shallow pocket on a vest or in the wader’s handwarming pocket or even in a pants pocket
The extra reach allowed me to simply flick the line back and forth in front of me, thus avoiding a back cast and the dratted knotweed.
Using a team of a yellow soft hackle wet in size 14 and the Leadwing, I rustled up a couple more of the truck fish from the stocking the first week of May. Neither paid any attention to the yellow fly, which I only included because I saw a yellowish bug flying around. This is called “Not Matching the Hatch.”
Back at base I next spent a thoroughly frustrating day failing to catch anything anywhere on a day that should have been perfect — overcast, warmish, drizzly. The kind of day that makes aquatic insects leap from their beds and rejoice in the promise of a new day.
After a solid five hours of fooling around I finally found some wild browns who were willing to play. They weren’t big but they were very wiggly, resulting in many “compassionate releases,” which is a convenient rationalization of the failure to land a fish.
Speaking of failure, I forgot to buy milk. Twice. So on two successive mornings I had to drink my coffee black.
I remembered to buy a quart, figuring I could bring it back to Connecticut in the cooler.
Well…
Let’s just say that as I peck this out on a rainy Saturday morning, May 31, I am enjoying a cup of black coffee.
