Every act played from the same repertoire, on the same instruments, in an attempt to capture exactly the same sound

Bluegrass festivals were a pretty weird proposition, all things considered. I tried to imagine a rock festival where everyone was expected to make at least half their set Lynyrd Skynyrd covers. Where every act played from the same repertoire, on the same instruments, in an attempt to capture exactly the same sound. But that’s what people came for. And when the bands weren’t singing old songs, or new songs crafted to sound like old songs, they were singing songs about how no one sang the old songs any more.

We got too far away from Carter and Ralph 

And the love of a sweet mountain girl 

We’re way down below that high lonesome sound 

And a far cry from Lester and Earl … 

I thought of Trevor: I knew that the bluegrass-on-bluegrass phenomenon caused him great irritation, because he regularly complained to me about it. ‘Whenever you turn on the radio there’s all these songs bragging on how great the music used to be,’ he would grumble, ‘and how it isn’t like it was in the old days. And all those bands are playing it like it was in the old days!’

E. John, Wayfaring stranger (2019), loc. 2,180