Bluegrass & Beer Festival And More With Yohanans In Summit 07Aug21-09Aug21

Mary & Jim came out to visit us this weekend in Summit. We had a packed weekend and began fast with my new cassis sour and a fine heirloom & burrata salad before hitting the Silverthorne First Friday event atop the new parking deck downtown. We listened to a good band and previewed the food offerings from the soon-to-be vendors in the Blue Bird Market in the 4th Street Crossing project... pizza and epenadas were both good. Rather than queuing for bad beer we closed out across the street at Angry James before continuing music training at the Nest Theater.

We were slow to start our Saturday with a bit of chill and plenty of smoke but got a roll going to Breck mid-morning. Mary was riding the nearly new Cannondale eBike and she set a wicked pace on the ups. We scored some PRs on the ride and enjoyed Daylite Donuts in Breck as well as the fine ColoRAD Bro hazy at Broken Compass and hit Steep (no pic) on the way back to the Nest too (to make it Jim's mini-bikery replacement). We made it to Twist in Breck for a decent but expensive dinner coupled to a cycle of commitment to receive a bottle of wine ~ ultimately a nice Chenin Blanc.

We had Dave's Eggs to kickoff our main event day... we were using public transport to get to the Keystone Bluegrass & Beer festival on Sunday. Eggs were great; transport was uneventfully masked and decently efficient (50min door to door); festival was excellent in tunes & brews. We heard seven fine bluegrass acts on three stages - most of the artists were from Colorado and were friends and all great. We even scored a fun meetup & beers-up with my friend Scott Kaiser and his new(ish) daughter Reid. Reid was darling and Scott was is good spirits from a big weekend with his kid.

Sierra Hull as well as Pixie & The Partygrass Boys were there ~ both excellent, but every band was very good. We noted Apex stage & sound did a great job on the sound systems as well. Here's the lineup starting with Many Mountains on the Montezuma Stage.

We moved to River Run stage and caught Pick & Howl...

Then it was back to Montezuma for House With A Yard. The flatpicking lead guitar on the right was excellent.

Again returning to River Run we enjoyed Woodbelly as we chatted with Dr Kizer. These guys are a classic and very tight 5 piece bluegrass band. A blast to hear.

We lunched with pasta and I caught The People's Key on the Quaking Aspen stage (which was strangely moved from the very cool Quaking Aspen amphitheater) for several songs. Very good - very fun with smaller sound (than even they wanted).

The awesome Sierra Hull (mandolin & voice mainly but she plays guitar too of course) closed out the Montezuma stage.

 

Pixie & The Partygrass Boys closed the River Run stage and they were joined by Hull for the final set. They are very good and fun - the lead singer can belt it but the breakthrough is the lady fiddle player who absolutely scorched us. What a great day of bluegrass and beer. On beer... some teams didn't commit and only brought cans and others didn't cater to my preferred styles. But, as my friend BK agrees, new locals @ Steep served their new Badest of the Bad DIPA and won my "best of beer" chit.

Arriving safely back at the Nest via Summit Stage again I invented a new cocktail inspired by the excellent Palisade peaches this summer. We all really like the Summit Sunset (as I named it)... in so many ways. The only bummer of the weekend was that our friends the Brantley's were missing due to ticketing snafus.