Bellevue isn’t the likeliest of places for a folkie music festival, but it does rate a few lines in a new bluegrass song.
“It’s a hard place to suffer, and that’s what gets me down,” sings Kristen Grainger in an ode to the city co-written by Dan Wetzel.
Regardless of any preconceived notions about the cultural scene in Bellevue, the burgeoning burg is now home to one of the region’s better-known music festivals.
Wintergrass kicks off downtown this Thursday at the Hyatt Regency, marking the first time in the festival’s 16-year history that it takes place outside Tacoma.
The event runs from Feb. 25-28, with over 30 bands performing, including Grammy-award winner Tim O’Brien as one of the headlining acts. Workshops and a youth academy will also take place throughout the festival, and impromptu jam sessions are traditionally a common site.
Wintergrass started at Tacoma’s Hotel Murano, and it stayed there until the Hyatt Regency wrestled it away with better rates and a long-term contract – eight years to be exact.
The festivities happen this year in a newly expanded portion of the Hyatt Regency that includes a 20-story tower with 351 guest rooms and 43,000 square feet of additional meeting space.
Organizers of the event sold out their entire block of 500 rooms at the Hyatt and nearly all their 100 rooms at the Westin, but tickets are still available for the festival itself.
Prices for individuals range from $20 per day to $125 for a weekend pass. Family weekend passes for two adults and up to four children cost $300.
Wintergrass previously took place in a cluster of Tacoma venues: primarily the Hotel Murano, along with a nearby historic church and a few other hotels.
Organizers had talked early on about keeping the entire event under one roof once it came to Bellevue, but they ultimately spread some of the shows to popular Lincoln Square dinner spots like Maggiano’s Little Italy, Twisted Cork and Stir Martini & Raw Bar.
Each of those venues offers an intimate setting where audience members can get close enough to “watch the fingers” of the performers, according to Wintergrass co-director Patrice O’Neill.
Some of the regular festival goers had a hard time accepting the move to Bellevue. O’Neill said she was getting hate mail from tradition-bound folkies and bluegrass lovers.
“It’s a desperately difficult situation,” she told The Reporter last July.
But O’Neill was determined to overcome the stereotypes, and she had some practice from the festival’s seminal days in Tacoma.
O’Neill told The Reporter in July that she had to deal with entrenched ideas about a “dirty and dangerous” Tacoma prior to the city’s urban renaissance.
Judging from ticket sales, the festival regulars have come to terms with their new host city.
“Ticket sales are through the roof,” O’Neill said. “We’ll be doing backflips if we see this two years in a row.”
Perhaps the song “It’s a Hard Place to Suffer” sums up the Wintergrass migration best with the opening line to its chorus:
“Wish I had sadder news to tell you, I might be happy here in Bellevue.”
