He never intended to own a music festival in the mountain hamlet of Telluride.
His first introduction to the annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival happened by chance: In 1985, Ferguson traveled to the picturesque box canyon nestled in the San Juan Mountains with that cousin who suggested they check out the grassroots event, then run by a local band of musical nomads. “I came up and went to the festival as a fan,” Ferguson recalls.
The event had started in 1973 at the behest of the Fall Creek Boys, and the first official Telluride Bluegrass Festival took place the following year on a small stage built in Telluride Town Park. More than fifty years later, the fest still sits at the site of the original stage, looking out at the surrounding peaks, and that main stage is now named for one of the earliest organizers, Fred Shellman. The Telluride Bluegrass Festival steadily grew in popularity, eventually ballooning to the 12,000-capacity gathering it is today. Having hosted such blockbuster musicians as Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, Tyler Childers, Tenacious D and Billy Strings, it's become one of the most notable bluegrass and roots music festivals in the country.
In 1987, Ferguson was back in Boulder, running the H.B. Woodsongs music shop, when he caught wind that the fest wasn't financially viable and decided to help. He figured it would be “a fun thing to do every June while I was being a real lawyer,” he says. “I slowly got more involved with the Telluride guys because [my store was] probably one of their biggest ticket outlets at the time. My original vision was just to get them in the black, to not be in financial turmoil every year.”
After thirty-plus years, the exact details of how he eventually ended up holding the reins of such an independent juggernaut are a little fuzzy, he admits. It is clear, however, that in 1989, he founded Planet Bluegrass, and the company has put on every Telluride Bluegrass Festival since then. Based in Lyons, the organization also hosts the popular RockyGrass, which is celebrating 53 years this July, as well as the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival.
“There are eighteen different versions of this story, and I got mine, but at the end of the day, I was standing there like, ‘Where is everybody? Okay, I guess I’ll book the bands.’ I was never, ever planning to do anything,” says Ferguson. “It’s like, a band started a festival, the festival grew to where they couldn’t handle it well. All of a sudden, I started booking the bands, and I’ve been pretty much the only one booking them ever since, really. It’s quite a team concept, but I’m the tiebreaker.”
Becoming the captain of your own festival sounds like every music fan’s dream. Or the plot of Wayne’s World 2: Just as the ghost of Jim Morrison told a hesitant Wayne Campbell, Ferguson discovered that if you book them, they will come.
“When it appeared I was going to be booking the bands that first year, I just booked a lot of my favorite bands,” Ferguson explains. “A lot of the music then was a given, like New Grass Revival, Strength in Numbers and Hot Rize.”
Ferguson helped Bluegrass — as the fest is referred to by those in the know — become a breeding ground for the hottest sounds and acts in the subgenre, including the advent and growth of the jamgrass offshoot that’s been predominantly featured in more recent lineups. So it’s no surprise that the annual summer-solstice celebration welcomes some of the biggest names in Americana music and sparked the careers of numerous acts in its fifty-plus-year history, particularly the Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks), Greensky Bluegrass and Trout Steak Revival — all past winners of the festival’s highly competitive Troubadour Contest. Then there’s newgrass pioneer Sam Bush, who’s long been christened the King of Telluride and has played every Telluride Bluegrass Festival but one, including a string of 51 straight appearances.
“It’s an important part of his legacy," Ferguson says of Bush. "He’s legitimately the king of the festival, but [showed] so many different ways the music could evolve from bluegrass."
This year, the 52nd Telluride Bluegrass Festival will take place from Thursday, June 19, to Sunday, June 22. The lineup includes heavy-hitters Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Greensky Bluegrass, Lake Street Dive, Yonder Mountain String Band and Alison Krauss & Union Station. Yes, Sam Bush and his band will be there, too.
While the music in Town Park only lasts four days, Bluegrass is so much more than the main stage centerpiece, especially for those who’ve come to look at it as a home away from home. The “festivarian” community is about the connections, the late-night campground jam scene and the strangers who become lifelong friends during the weekend pilgrimage. The former mining town, which is home to around 2,500 residents at any other time during the year, swells significantly in hosting upwards of 20,000 people each day during the festivities. Temporary tent settlements spring up everywhere between Town Park and Down Valley locales Lawson Hill and Ilium, and a convoy of yellow school buses is deployed each morning, making stops from encampment to encampment, shuttlig everyone into the fest for their bluegrass fix.
“It is the center of the bluegrass universe,” Ferguson proclaims, citing a commonly accepted adage first offered by mainstay mandolinist and Punch Brothers member Chris Thile, who once quipped that there are three official holidays throughout the year: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
“It’s always easy for me to say, without a bit of remorse, there’s no greater solstice celebration than being in Telluride. It is gorgeous,” Ferguson adds. “The bands almost don’t matter. It’s a week-long thing. There are probably people in the Town Park campground that I’m not sure even come to the festival because it’s such a community. It’s a family reunion.”
Fiddler Jake Simpson — who has played with Yonder Mountain String Band, the Lil Smokies and Lukas Nelson — is damn near addicted to getting lost in the revelry of the campground, which is adjacent to the recreational softball and soccer fields where the festival proper takes place.
“I can’t avoid it,” he says. “If I’m in Telluride, I’ll do a midnight set at Camp Run-A-Muk.”
That's a longstanding spot in the far corner of the grounds and the former quarters of late legend Hippie Jerry, the nickname of familiar face Jerry Lunsford, who passed away in 2019. Planet Bluegrass even created the Hippie Jerry Campsite Challenge in recognizing those who practice creative, sustainable camping.
Bluegrass is about the people and place more than the performances (though having consistently killer lineups certainly adds to the ambience). The term “festivarian” is of a uniquely Bluegrass vernacular inspired by the C. P. Cavafy poem, Ithaka, which first appeared in a 1994 festival brochure.
“That’s been our champion: festivarian ethic. Telluride is a journey. The festival isn’t four days long; it starts when you get your packing list, and you join the journey then,” Ferguson explains. “By the time we get those 10,000-plus people up there from all over the world, the bands don’t matter. Maybe the feeling of the music does, but our headliner is 51 years of putting community first.”
Ferguson and the Bluegrass crew are currently working on a documentary; he's now in Nashville with his 91-year-old mother, where the production team wrapped up an interview with Billy Strings. The Bluegrass newcomer is already a festivarian favorite, since during his one-day appearance with Thile last year, he took the time to stomp around the campground and play a little, all while wearing a snapback hat from local coffee spot The Coffee Cowboy.
“The festival infects everyone. So many people find their way to be a longtime part of it, from Béla Fleck to my mom. My mom has seen more shows than any festivarian,” Ferguson concludes. “It’s got a life of its own and a relationship with so many people in such an intimate way.”
Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Thursday, June 19, through Sunday, June 22, Telluride Town Park, 500 East Colorado Ave., Telluride. Tickets are $130-$405.
