Media Credit: Anthony Zoubek Ed Akers of Taylorville watches a bluegrass performance while leaning against Mt. Pulaski’s first school bell, on display outside the courthouse.

The fields of Mt. Pulaski are rich with corn and soybeans.

But come mid-June - through the efforts of farmer Tom Martin - the community's highest- yielding crops are overshadowed by bluegrass.

Martin coordinated the annual Central Illinois Food, Wine and Bluegrass Festival. For four years running, Martin's work and planning have brought live bluegrass music to Mt. Pulaski's historic Courthouse Square.

The Mt. Pulaski Courthouse is one of Illinois' two surviving Eight Judicial Circuit Courthouses in which Abraham Lincoln practiced law before the presiding Judge David Davis of Bloomington. On Saturday, June 14 and Sunday, June 15, the Central Illinois Food, Wine and Bluegrass Festival provided that history with a soundtrack comprised of nine bluegrass bands performing on the courthouse lawn.

Martin said the atmosphere of the festival was meant to be that of a "homegrown market" promoting agricultural products made in Illinois.

"Last year, we had a few Illinois wineries here," Martin explained. "This year, we really made the effort to add as many wineries as we could get to come, along with other manufacturers of Illinois-made products - food, corn and soy products specifically, from wines to corn and soy-based foods to corn-based cleaners and soy-based candles.

"I brought aboard the wine industry," Martin continued, "and the Illinois Wine Council, as well as food people from out in Chicago - the Illinois Food Safety Center - to help me put this together."

The business community of Mt. Pulaski sponsored the event to help promote the town and its agricultural tourism, Martin said.

"As we sat back, thought about this festival and contemplated what would work and what would not work with its rural setting, we saw, entertainment-wise, a link between what we do [as farmers] and bluegrass music," Martin explained.

"People continue to hold onto bluegrass music because it has a down-home, homegrown feel and reminds us of the rural countryside, its people and their maintenance of simpler times.

"That ties better into the theme of our festival than would live performances of rock and roll or jazz," Martin added.

Media Credit: Anthony Zoubek The Railsplitters Antique Auto Club of Lincoln brought some of their classic cars for exhibition at the festival.

Terry Lease coordinated the music lineup for Mt. Pulaski's bluegrass festival. Through his involvement with the Midwest Bluegrass Festival Association, Lease has brought talent to bluegrass festivals throughout Illinois, Indiana and Missouri over the last 15 years.

"Over the course of the year, we will work with 85 to 90 different bands," Lease explained. "Depending on the festival presentation - be it high-profile [and] national or local - we try, with each event and its given budget, to offer the best talent available for whatever type of festival venue it is."

Hence why the planning of bluegrass music festivals vary from venue to venue, Lease said.

"Once the time frame is established within the venue itself and you realize what kind of money is there to work with, you start looking for groups," Lease added. "You go from there."

Media Credit: Anthony Zoubek A festival attendee talks politics with “Abraham Lincoln” and asks for an autograph.

Specific to the Mt. Pulaski festival, Lease said the bands High Cotton and McGee Creek were expected to bring in local crowds.

"High Cotton and McGee Creek have followings because they are home state, home-based groups," Lease explained. "They have an identity with the festival locality."

Lease said he expected the Gerald Evans and Paradise band to attract bluegrass aficionados from all over Illinois and perhaps out-of-state.

"We booked those groups [expecting] there [would] be people who recognize certain bands' names and who follow those groups," Lease said. "Gerald Evans and Paradise, for example, has that kind of higher profile."

Gerald Evans and Paradise was formed by fiddle, guitar and mandolin player Gerald Evans and has been performing for the last four years. Evans is known around bluegrass music circles for his involvement with the group Traditional Grass.

Evans wrote songs for Traditional Grass, the late Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley (featured on the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack). When Traditional Grass folded, Evans had a song in the bluegrass Top 30, one in the Top 10, as well as one of the best-selling bluegrass albums in the country.

Regardless of those successes, he formed the Gerald Evans and Paradise band as a means of "being able to keep paying the light bill, so to speak."

Based out of Cincinnati, Gerald Evans and Paradise perform 50 to 60 performances a year with a draw of 8,000 to 10,000 spectators. With a projected 3,000 in attendance at the Central Illinois Food, Wine and Bluegrass festival, Mt. Pulaski is one of the smaller venues Evans said he is scheduled to play in 2003.

No matter the size of the crowd, "the experience of playing bluegrass music for anybody is humbling enough," Evans said.

Lease said he foresaw the Alton-based Harman Family Band bringing knowledgeable bluegrass fans out of the woodwork and out to Mt. Pulaski for the weekend.

"Mike Harman was a member of Alison Krauss and the Union Station and [was nominated for] a Grammy," Lease explained. "Now he has his two sons and wife playing with him. People are aware of Mike's significance."

 

Media Credit: Anthony Zoubek The historic Mt. Pulaski Courthouse, its lawn and the community’s Courthouse Square played host to the fourth annual Central Illinois Food, Wine and Bluegrass Festival.

The Waring Family, The McKendrees, the Uptown String Band and Flintlock also performed at the festival.

No matter how well known or "down-home" any of the bluegrass bands came across to Mt. Pulaski's visitors, "the event itself - in its uniqueness and popularity - will always be the event's biggest draw," Lease said.

"This festival is presented without charge, will reach a few hundred people who want good food, good music and good exhibits under the shade of the trees on the Mt. Pulaski Courthouse lawn," Lease continued. "Those factors played into the planning of the festival and differentiate it from the types of festivals and talent lineups we would put together had we different funding, different exhibition resources and a different expected turnout."

Bluegrass is an American art form, Lease said. Bands in the Central Illinois Food, Wine and Bluegrass Festival simply set out to make downtown Mt. Pulaski their canvas.

"The music is part of our American roots and is at the core of country music," Lease explained. "Even the latest in country music has fallen back on its bluegrass roots with its focus put back on acoustics.

"But bluegrass maintains its separate characteristics and those things that make it a unique genre all its own," Lease added. "Mt. Pulaski's festival is an opportunity to give the public a better understanding and awareness of what the genre is about."

Fiddling with a banjo "started during the slave days," Evans explained. "The melodies of some bluegrass songs are grounded in English and Irish and Scottish immigrant traditions - immigrants who brought those songs to American farm life.

 

Media Credit: Anthony Zoubek The courthouse desk at which Abraham Lincoln sat and prepared for cases heard before Bloomington’s Judge David Davis is on display.

"Mom, church and the themes of traditional bluegrass music are a sampling of American heritage. You cannot find any other form of music that so closely represents the melting pot of cultures in America."

By creating a successful vendor's market around that musical melting pot, Martin said he hopes the Central Illinois Food, Wine and Bluegrass Festival will be recognized statewide as a major festival event.

"We tried, and in years to come will continue to try, and make this festival something Mt. Pulaski can hang its hat on."