Medical Lake bluegrass festival is back along with with talented acts, nationally renowned and local

Since 2002, the Blue Waters Bluegrass Festival has been an end-of-summer highlight in Spokane County, bringing people of all ages together to enjoy the acoustic string-heavy genre played live in Medical Lake’s Waterfront Park.

This year’s weekendlong festival began Friday with a lineup featuring 9 bands – Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, East Nash Grass, Blue Point, the Cody Sisters, Greg & Caridwen Spatz, Friends Again, High Valley Mountain Boys, Homebrew Stringband and Blue Ribbon Tea Company.

With only one main stage and a varying average of around 1,000 attendees per year, the festival is on the smaller side. In fact, it’s one of the smallest festivals headliner multi-Grammy-nominated Laurie Lewis and her band, the Right Hands, have played.

“It has an intimacy to it that I really appreciate,” Lewis said. “I always love going to northern Washington. I think it’s a beautiful area,” said Lewis. “I love the people out there. It’s always a great audience.”

Lewis, who has been writing and performing in the genre for nearly four decades and collaborated with big names in rock, folk and country music such as Linda Ronstadt, said this year’s festival is particularly special. While Lewis has performed at Blue Waters before, this year is the first year the Right Hands, which is composed of fiddle player Brandon Godman, banjo player George Guthrie and bassist Hasee Ciaccio will accompany her. Not only that, but the band also will perform select songs off their new unreleased album “O California,” which is scheduled to come out in September.

“It’s a very tight little quartet, and we all just love playing together. So it’s exciting for us to get to go do it at the festival,” Lewis said.

Music director of Blue Waters, Kevin Brown, said the size of the festival, in addition to the “mom-and-pop” feel bluegrass festivals tend to radiate across the country, is often what keeps bigger artists like Lewis returning.

“A lot of bluegrass artists get their start going to festivals and playing festivals like that,” he said. “I’ve heard a number of times over the years from artists who get a little bigger, and it’s just almost this sigh of relief to come back to a smaller festival that’s not as polished, especially when we’re away from town like Blue Waters. They really enjoy coming back to something like that, which is really beautiful.”

Brown said the festival committee usually tries to highlight two or three nationally known bluegrass bands, a few bands from the Northwest region and a handful of local bands. Additionally, Brown said they feature two or three bands belonging to the Inland Northwest Bluegrass Music Association – a nonprofit organization that has been promoting the genre regionally for around the last 30 years and one of the festival’s primary sponsors.

As a nonprofit organization, Brown said Blue Waters is run solely by volunteers and is funded by ticket sales, a variety of donors and sponsors. In addition to the Inland Northwest Bluegrass Music Association, this year’s list of sponsors include Northern Quest Resort & Casino, Spokane Public Radio, the Cheney Free Press, the Inlander and, most recently, STCU.

“We like to support efforts that promote arts and education and community, and this kind of hits both of those, so we’re really happy to be sponsoring it,” said STCU spokesman Dan Hansen. “Also, we like supporting Medical Lake, following the 2023 fires that had such a huge impact on the community there. We love this as just an opportunity for that community to come together and enjoy this great event.”

Two years after the Gray fire in 2023 devastated areas of Medical Lake, Brown said while the landscape of Waterfront Park has changed significantly, things are starting to grow back – including the number of festival-goers.

“A huge huge part of our story in the last few years was that fire came through exactly a week after the festival, and burned all the surrounding wood brush, and some of that is the area where people camp,” Brown said. “In some ways, it was a recovery festival (last year), but the city of Medical Lake has been dealing with the same thing just in managing the park and trying to recover after the fire. They’ve done a great job – they’ve been really wonderful to work with.”

Camping, although not required, has been an important aspect in bluegrass festivals historically, Brown said, and is something he looks forward to every year at Blue Waters.

“Some of the real fun starts after the lights of the main stage go down,” Brown said. “Sometimes the headliner artists will hang around and go up to the campground, and start picking tunes with people. It’s really fun to watch.”

Friday’s events will kick off at 4 p.m. with an open mic, followed by performances by the High Valley Mountain Boys, Greg & Caridwen Spatz, Blue Point, and headliner Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands.

On Saturday, three new artists, Homebrew Stringband, the Cody Sisters and headliner East Nash Grass, will take the stage.

The last day of the festival will also include new performances from Blue Ribbon Tea Company and Friends again, with second performances from the Cody Sisters and East Nash Grass bringing the Bluegrass weekend to a close.

On Saturday and Sunday, festivalgoers are also welcome to attend a series of bluegrass musical workshops alongside lineup artists before the scheduled performances begin.

“I always enjoy those, because there’s some spontaneous little things that happen in the workshops, Brown said. “You get two really good mandolin players who maybe kind of know each other from just being in the scene. And they’ll say, ‘I don’t know, what do you want to play?’

“And they’ll just start picking some tune. And everybody’s jaws are kind of hanging on the floor.”

Being a family-friendly festival, children 12 and under are allowed free entry with a parent or guardian. Weekend festival passes as well as single-day festival passes are still available for purchase on the festival’s website, but weekend passes are required for those who wish to camp. Ticket prices will increase to “at the gate” pricing on the actual dates of the festival, Brown said.

While attendees aren’t watching, singing or dancing along to workshops and performances, they are welcome to peruse the festival’s variety of crafting and food vendors, or take a walk around the lake and go for a swim.

“I’m really looking forward to that,” Lewis said, referring to being near the lake. “Dipping in the lake in between sets or something, and just having a kind of a vacation in music.

More detailed schedules, lineup and camping information can be found on the festival’s website at bluewatersbluegrass.org/#top.