See festival’s music schedule for the Aug. 7-8 festival at the end of the article
(This article first appeared in the August print edition of the Hendersonian.)
In 1986, Ken Christopher had some good reasons for wanting to start a bluegrass music festival in Henderson.
But he could hardly have imagined that 40 years later, Bluegrass in the Park — which returns Friday, Aug. 7, and Saturday, Aug. 8, and is regarded as the oldest free bluegrass festival in the country — would still be going strong.
“I’ve loved bluegrass all my life, as far as I know,” Christopher said in a recent interview. “When I was six or seven, I got my first banjo, from Sears and Roebuck.” He doubts it cost so much as $50.
“I never had a teacher,” he said. “I just banged around on it” and, by his own assessment, never became very good at it.
After graduating from the old Henderson County High and spending some lackluster years in college, he got drafted and served in Vietnam. He then followed his parents to Wisconsin, where his father had moved to become partners in a lumber mill.
While there, he and a friend ran a bluegrass festival during Eau Claire’s Sawdust City Days before Christopher found his way back to Henderson in 1982, meeting and picking around with guitarist Barry Denton.
A year or so later, Denton introduced Christopher to guitarist and humorist Bob Park, “and we really hit it off,” he said. The three formed a bluegrass band called Barry, Bob and the Banjo Player.
Christopher had a good singing voice, “but I knew I was not any good (on banjo) because I had never done anything with it,” such as taking lessons.
After a while, another banjo player who “was 50 times better than me” joined the group, so Christopher switched instruments.
“I had to learn the mandolin if I was going to stay in the band,” he said.
The band evolved with Denton on lead guitar, Park on rhythm guitar (as well as serving as its wisecracking front man), John Stanley Hoffman playing bass, Christopher on mandolin and a series of fellows on guitar.
Over time, the band took on the name Canoe Creek. “EJ named us,” Christopher said, referring to his wife. “Canoe Creek was not much more than a sewage ditch,” which is about what EJ thought of their playing.
“But we got better as time went along,” Christopher said. They got invited to play at elementary schools and civic club meetings and festivals. They even got to open for country and bluegrass stars such as Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs when they came to perform at the fine arts center here.
By 1986, when Christopher was serving as the veterans’ specialist with the state employment office in Henderson, he became inspired to organize a little bluegrass festival. “I wanted to do something,” he said. “This community had been so good to us.”
“I called it payback.”
That summer, he made a few posters and lined up three other bluegrass bands to join Canoe Creek for a Saturday afternoon of music in Central Park.
The next year, Christopher renamed it Bluegrass in the Park and lined up “the first big name I ever booked”: The Doug Dillard Band. Dillard, a skilled banjo player, in the early 1960s co-founded a band called The Dillards, which went on to portray the backwoods musical family the Darlings on several episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show,” helping introduce bluegrass to a national television audience.
Bringing Dillard to Henderson notwithstanding, Bluegrass in the Park’s early production values were decidedly down home. Initially, there was no lighting, so shows ended before nightfall. The “stage” consisted of one or more old semi-flatbed trailers onto which plywood would be nailed down to make sure that no performers fell through the bed.
“What did I know about construction?” Christopher said. “Some two-by-fours, a tarp — they sufficed for several years.”
Still, he had some standards. One was that the festival would be free to attend. “If we broke even, I was fine with it, and we did,” he said. “We never went in the hole.”
To accomplish that, he relied heavily on Marcia Eblen, Henderson’s longtime tourism director. “Marcia, too, wanted it to be free,” Christopher said. “She was our fundraiser, and she did yeoman’s work (such as securing event sponsors). She kept Bluegrass on the map.”
Eblen’s work was supplemented by income from food sales, bucket shakes through the audience and other fundraisers.
“I loved it being free, treating performers like they were something even if they weren’t and just putting on the dog,” he said.
As Bluegrass in the Park’s success grew, the number of bands increased to eight, 10, 12, so it expanded to a Friday night and all-day Saturday event.
Professional sound vendors were brought on board, along with a professional stage and lighting. Julie Martin, the first Downtown Henderson Project manager, helped organize a folklife festival that accompanied the music. Christopher invited biking enthusiast Nibby Priest to tie a community bike ride in with Bluegrass, “so it got even bigger.”
“I brought old cars to the festival,” he said. “I brought pole vaulting (by skilled competitive vaulters) to the festival. I found out that (bluegrass pioneer) Bill Monroe pole-vaulted when he was younger.”
And the festival in 1998 moved to Audubon Mill Park overlooking the Ohio River, its longtime home.
Christopher strived to bring in the best name bands he could afford—artists such as Flatt Lonesome (which had charted multiple No. 1 hits), IIIrd Tyme Out (named the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Vocal Group of the Year seven consecutive times) and the Grammy-nominated Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, among others.
“I would scour the internet to find new talent, but they had to be good,” Christopher said. More than once, “A year or two later, they would hit big,” which one local dubbed “the Henderson Bump.”
He developed a two-prong strategy for booking bands:
• “Never take their first offer. You’ll be paying through the roof.”
• “Be patient. They want to play.”
“All the sudden, God almighty, we were out 10 years, then 20 years,” Christopher said.
Canoe Creek stayed together for 24 years before going through a hard breakup.
As for Bluegrass, Christopher said, “I retired at 30 (years). I still loved it, but it became a second job.”
“I guess I just wore myself out with it,” he said.
When Christopher retired from Bluegrass in the Park, he made a point to stay away from the festival. He didn’t want to be the old guy, seemingly looking over new organizers’ shoulders and making criticisms.
But Christopher looks back at those first 30 years fondly.
“I wanted to be part of the community,” he said, “and give back.”
What’s up for 2026
While what Christopher started is heading into its 40th festival on Aug. 7 and 8, Hendersonians Mark and Monica Hargis are approaching their own milestone: organizing their 10th Bluegrass in the Park.
Mark practically grew up listening to Canoe Creek. “That’s what got me into bluegrass,” he said. “They were all an influence on me, Canoe Creek.”
His own band, King’s Highway, featuring Mark, a mandolin player, and his son Zeb, a guitarist, first appeared at Bluegrass in 2007 and eventually succeeded Canoe Creek as the house band for the festival.
This year, Mark Hargis said festival-goers can expect to hear a variety of bluegrass-influenced music.
“It’s fantastic,” Mark said of the lineup.
There will be traditionalists such as Sammy Adkins & the Sandy Hook Mountain Boys, with their Ralph Stanley influences.
Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen “are just a hard-driving bluegrass band,” Hargis said.
Mike Compton “is just one of my heroes. He is one of the best mandolin pickers out there and I love his style of playing. He’s going to have stars with him; he knows everyone.”
Love Sick Blues performs “old, old country” such as Hank Williams Sr.
Ralph Stanley II & The Clinch Mountain Boys will deliver more traditional bluegrass, while fiddler Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper “are climbing the ladder so fast he doesn’t know it.”
Meanwhile, the Bluegrass Folk Life activities in the park from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday will feature artists and vendors as well as special activities such as children’s interactive painting and rag doll making.
“That the (Bluegrass) festival is our longest-running festival is really special,” Abby Dixon, executive director of the Henderson Tourist Commission, said.
“We see folks from all over who come to this festival” from Florida to Wisconsin and help fill restaurants and hotel rooms, Dixon said.
New this year
Around 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 7, an open jam session is planned at the On Deck outdoor bar across from Audubon Mill Park for “all the musicians who come in early” for Bluegrass, Mark Hargis said.
No camping will be permitted around the festival site this year. Instead, all campers will be referred to the campground at Audubon State Park.
Also this year, the music on Friday will begin at noon instead of late afternoon.
But the Hargises said that, as ever, bands will be treated to great hospitality (for which Henderson has become acclaimed among both Bluegrass and Handy performers) and the army of volunteers.
“We couldn’t do it without them,” Mark said.
