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Jeremy Garrett is co-lead singer of the Infamous Stringdusters, a band that has fused bluegrass with elements of pop music. Image courtesy Infamous Stringdusters

The bluegrass industry’s annual conference and festival – happening here in Nashville this week – is pulling up stakes and moving to Raleigh next year. Industry leaders say they’re aiming for a new balance in the stylistic push and pull between purists and progressives.

Bluegrass was nearly forty years old by the time it got its own trade organization: the International Bluegrass Music Association. The music’s roots in the 1946 string band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys were clear enough. But the IBMA has always avoided saying exactly how far the music can veer from that template and still be called bluegrass.

“If we decided to spend our time trying to define bluegrass for people, we would spend all of our time doing that, and all of our resources,” says Nancy Cardwell, IBMA’s new executive director.

Cardwell says musicians play the music in their heart and allow bluegrass fans to decide what they like.

The IBMA philosophy sounds great. But as far back as the ‘50s, those who tweaked the traditional bluegrass band model were already raising the ire of purists. The absence of a sanctioned definition leaves the door open for opinion.

Music in Safe Hands

“A Far Cry From Lester & Earl” is a song nominated for IBMA Song of the Year. Junior Sisk & Ramblers Choice lament the distance modern bluegrass has traveled from the foundational picking of Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. The band’s concerns are a fair representation of the traditionalist concerns.

Nancy Cardwell is the new executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Association. Image courtesy IBMA

“They’re worried that in a generation people won’t know what real bluegrass sounds like anymore, or they won’t recognize it because so many things have been called bluegrass,” Cardwell says. “So there’s that fear going on. But I don’t think we need to be fearful. I think the music is in safe hands.”

Some of those hands might sculpt it into acoustic funk—with horns. The Infamous Stringdusters are at the more experimental end of the spectrum. Last year, banjo player Chris Pandolfi wrote a blog manifesto about his band finding an audience outside of bluegrass. It got so much attention that he was invited to speak to a packed session at the 2011 IBMA conference.

“The term, from the outside, really represents a niche market, something that’s very small-scale,” he said. “So in an effort to reach more fans and find a bigger world, we realized that we had to transcend this.”

Pandolfi’s provocative talk got a standing ovation, which isn’t all that surprising considering that seeking out new audiences is in the music’s DNA. Even Flatt & Scruggs did it back in the day, by winning over hip, young folk revivalists.

An Unlocked Door

“A lot of the festivals we’ve been playing this year, we’ve been by far the only bluegrass band there,” says fellow Stringduster Jeremy Garrett. “The rest of them were like techno bands and dance music bands.”

As the Stringdusters’ fiddler and co-lead singer, Garrett finds it natural to fuse bluegrass with other sounds from the pop music landscape.

“I mean, I’m in my mid-30s now,” he says. “I listened to Guns & Roses right alongside of Flatt and Scruggs. So it’s like all those things were influences on me at the same time.”

Even if they are entertaining hoards of ravers, latter-day hippies and college kids, Garrett and his band mates still play straight-ahead bluegrass sometimes. Garrett even serves on the IBMA board—a board that’s promoting a big tent vision of bluegrass.

Executive director Nancy Cardwell says that means proving there’s still room for all the bands with traditional leanings, and space for groups that are cozy with jamgrass and indie rock scenes.

“You can sit at home in your house and say, ‘The door’s unlocked. You’re welcome to come in. I won’t keep you away,’” she says. “But it’s another thing to go and invite somebody to come to your house and tell them where you live.”