Life

Dancing in the park

There'll be strumming on the porches of log cabins and jamming outside the General Store as Tyrone's Ulster American Folk Park hosts it's Annual Bluegrass Music Festival this month. Jenny Lee chats to headline act, queen of bluegrass Dale Ann Bradley

A REGULAR performer in the Grand Ole Opry, five-time Female Bluegrass Vocalist of the Year Dale Ann Bradley has been christened the Queen of Bluegrass. Despite her status as one of bluegrasses most celebrated artists, Bradley comes from humble roots. Raised in the coal fields of Appalachia, eastern Kentucky, with no running water and one single light socket, her father was a Primitive Baptist pastor. "There weren't any solo performances; it was all congregational singing without music. We sang Old English hymns from our little hymnal The Globe. It probably transpired from Ireland and Scotland psalms. It trained my ear and I learnt to hear things without instruments," she says.

Although Bradley is thankful for the musical influence that the Church gave her, it was a very restrictive religion where television and radio were extremely limited. As a child she occupied herself by playing ball games and the occasional board game.

Apart from tapes of Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner - thanks to her uncle - Bradley had no musical reference points outside her Church. But that didn't stop her desire for a guitar and at 14 her wish came true. "It was a little plywood, small body guitar with six strings and I made a pick from a milk jug. I wanted to play all day which drove everybody crazy. It was very basic and didn't hold up very well," she says.

About teaching herself to play, Bradley simply says: "I just figured it all out."

She earned money at the age of 17 through taking part in an audio documentary for the University of Texas about three generations of women growing up in the remote Williams Branch which enabled her to buy "a real nice guitar."

It was thanks to the band director at her high school, Mearl Risner, a childhood friend of her mother, that her career began to take shape. He and his wife sang at Pine Mountain State Park in the summer's and invited Bradley to perform with them. It was the start of a 30-year musical career, first with the New Coon Creek Girls and then as a solo artist.

So how did her father react to her choice of career? "He wasn't very happy at the start but I wanted it so bad I found my way. Over the years they have been very helpful looking after my boy."

Her son John has followed in his mother's footsteps. Majoring in music at college. He plays bass and piano and has accompanied her on a number of gigs including playing at the Grand Ole Opry. Bradley has travel all over the world with her music and has great memories of previous visits to Omagh's Bluegrass Festival. "It's huge. There's so many stages and you meet so many people. It's awesome and the audiences seem to really understand and are absorbed by the music," she says.

The largest bluegrass festival outside north America kickstarts with the Friday Party in the Park events. There will be toe-tappin, knee-clappin, finger-pickin' music throughout the outdoor museum with six stages of music dotted around the exhibit buildings.

Now in it's 23rd year, the weekend music festival will also feature Love Canon, who specialise in bluegrass versions of 80s hits including those of Dire Straits and Cyndi Lauper, Canadian April Verch, Four Wheel Drive from the Netherlands and Estonia quartet Robirohi. Home-grown talent includes Rackhouse Pilfer from Sligo and Belfast band The White Mansions.

Dale Ann Bradley loves bluegrass due to its passion and authenticity. "It's real. The people that play it are very real. It's not commercialised. You find something that will touch your spirit because the stories are true. It's honest, raw music.

If you want the truth about music and songs, bluegrass is the place to find it.''

Her favourite tracks are Run Rufus Run, a bootlegging song, Somewhere South of Crazy and Julia Belle. Surprisingly she also performs some U2 covers and enjoys I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For from The Joshua Tree album. "We did that the first time I came to Omagh. We were in a pub and there was a band in there that had come to see our shows. We just started singing that together and the drums and fiddles were going. It was one of the coolest moments in my career. "I like to play different styles of music from time to time and put bluegrass instrumentation with it to see how that goes but I think probably now I'm considered more bluegrass than when I was younger," adds Bradley, who is currently putting together her seventh album.