What with all the music acts, beer and wine tasting, flatpicking and other contests, antiques appraisal and various workshops, the fifth annual Roots and Bluegrass Music Festival in River Falls is sure to be finger pickin’ good.
Bands playing at the prominent spring fest — at least 12 of them performing more than 50 total hours of free foot stompin’ music at 13 different venues — will take the various stages, all indoors, between April 9-12.
A key part of the festival is the second year of a local craft beer and wine tasting event, which can attract many visitors to River Falls, and also even more attendance among the locals, as it starts early, running from 5-8 p.m. Friday at Juniors Bar and Restaurant. There have been many scheduled openings of new wineries and craft-style breweries in the immediate area, and six of them each will display their liquid wares, with their creative names showing the diversity. The tasting event is a high-profile but still down-to-earth activity to accompany the music weekend. This is the only event of the entire festival where you have to pay to participate, but you get a lot of bang for your buck, as well over a dozen of the drinks can be sampled for only a $20 fee (or $30 at the door). Pushing Chain will provide music.
The Wisconsin State Flatpicking Championship for bluegrass-style instruments such as guitar is billed as among the only ones of its kind, where people who include accomplished musicians can compete and see how they measure up against the best. It will be held on Saturday at Juniors from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and the winner gets an authentic handcrafted guitar.
Another novel event that is special to the festival is at RiverWalk Art and Antiques on the north end of the downtown on Saturday from 2-4 p.m., where artists can have their musical instruments and other “treasures” appraised for value. You can see how much that antique instrument you’ve had around for years is worth, or just watch the fun. In the spirit of the festival, Riverwalk also will host a clogging demonstration.
There is also a new singer-songwriter competition on Saturday at Juniors from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. and open mic and open jams at various times during the weekend, at the Dish ‘N the Spoon Cafe, Family Fresh Market and Funktion Junktion. At these, individual instrumentalists and singers mix and match with members of the house band. The first three places each in the flatpicking championship and singer-songwriter competition get prizes.
As part of the four days of music, the headliners on the weekend in the late night slots include the Barley Jacks from 8-11 p.m. on Friday at Juniors as well as Dead Horses, a Stillwater, Minn. band that gives a regional presence from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. on that same night at Shooters, and Art Sevenson and High Water from 8-11 p.m. on Saturday at Juniors.
The main stage at Juniors opens an hour before each of the music acts get going. Sorry, there are no pets allowed at any of the events.
The festival’s bands incorporate at least seven different genres, but all have a tie-in with roots music, bluegrass and Americana, also showing variances of style within a genre, said Jeff Wesley of Juniors.
Chris Silver, another one of the organizers, and his band Good Intentions, will headline the festival on Sunday from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the West Wind Supper Club, and Silver said the festival’s shows tend to be a mix of bluegrass diehards and younger people first becoming acquainted with the music.
The fact that they are playing at what is predominantly a supper club underscores what’s special about this festival. “You can see a dozen great regional and local bands within the course of one weekend. While most festivals have one stage that the bands cycle through, our festival has stages all around town,” said Wesley.
In recent editions of the festival, attendance has been up sharply. The fest has been billed as an event where patrons can make an entire day of it, going to breakfast as a start, and then continuing on into the afternoon and evening by taking in plenty of music and other activities. They are even invited to parttake in the various “Bluegrass brunches” put on by local eateries.
Patrons have said they like the experience of being at someplace like a local grocery store, as one of the venues with music is the Family Fresh Market, then rounding a corner and finding that hey, there’s a band playing there, said Judy Berg of the River Falls Area Chamber of Commerce. Other stores where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find bands, but they’ll be playing there anyway, are local cafes and antique-based shops.
“With this, you’ll never know what is going to happen,” Berg said about the surprises that can unfold at the festival. But one thing is for certain; this is April and in Wisconsin that can still mean rough weather, but it doesn’t matter, since the bands are all indoors and the only time people have to be outside is the short walk from venue to venue. All of them are in a few block section of historic Main Street, with its tree lined median, and even this short jaunt allows people to enjoy its unique character, with specialty shops, restaurants and the historic Falls Theater. Along with this ambiance is the hustle and bustle of a vibrant college campus, Chamber officials note. They also point out the stay and play aspect of River Falls, as there are three extensive attractions, such as walking tours, within blocks of the downtown, as well as five motels and other hospitality-based businesses nearby.
The festival is presented by the River Falls Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau. For more information, contact them at (715) 425-2533 or www.riverfallsbluegrass.com.

To my friend who is a bouncer at Dick’s Bar and Grill, what happened?
You thought that with St. Patrick’s Day being on a weekday, there would be “wee” little customer traffic. But the place was as hoppin’ as a green toad, while serving the green bunny Hopster brew by New Glarus, and the whole front room was full and aflutter. (I especially liked the green facial hair, as in a mustache that was being passed around to patrons at more than one table, and sideburns that were showing on some of these new Irish, in a flash of flair that continued to show until the weekend). And the pair of bartenders sported fully-solid green and a red shirts, respectively, as to the Irish, one was a Grinch. The same two colors were sported by an off-duty server in his shorts and top; did they coordinate before coming to work? And did they include the Mennonite I saw who was virtually part-Irish in a long, bright green coat?
There were St. Paddy’s people aplenty at the Village Inn in North Hudson, as well, in part to raise some green of their own for the well deserved Randi Deal medical benefit. The inn over the holiday welcomed village vagabonds on one of the first stops in what this year was a more informally organized pub crawl, although all the places were still hit. What is becoming basically the house band closed their final set with an Irish-themed ditty on Tuesday, which was followed with more Shamrock-style music played on the jukebox.
The busyness trend was not the same everywhere, but at the Smilin’ Moose, someone was part Irish with a plaid shirt that had green stripes, (or were they grayish)? Ditto with two people who had green shirt only and were celebrating one’s birthday with the infamous more-than-one-liquor oversize ladle drink, just perfect for an Irish B-Day. To which the bartender said, “birthday, Christmas, whatever, you’ve been good right?” Now that’s the luck of the Irish!
– A server at Dick’s who has blazing red, curly hair said that despite that, she is only one-eighth Irish. A close relative, who is similarly Irish but also part Mexican, has very dark complexion and hair, she said. Put that in the “everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day” file.
– If St. Patrick’s Day is a travel holiday, St. Paul is not the only likely destination. Server Brooke at the Green Mill said she would not be at the Saturday party her employer was throwing, because she was flying to Chicago to take in the Irish things there, such as a parade that will rival anything you’d find. One of her co-workers, Shavon, took the occasion to go into Minneapolis and go a “wee” bit crazy, or maybe more. And then there’s consummate downtown server Sofie, who a bit later was en route to the Windy City for her own birthday festivities.
– Although on the Saturday that was a pre-party for St. Patrick’s Day, there wasn’t a lot of green being worn, this says it all about the sheer number of people basically being Irish: There was a guy trying to negotiate the length of the Smilin’ Moose, which boasted the “pre-party” moniker, on crutches (you simply don’t do that).
– And the Saturday following the holiday saw a guy in a get-up as The Riddler, complete with green checks as part of his plaid shirt and pants. That fit at many levels, as TVs were showing a Batman marathon on TNT. And to complete the green theme, as part of March Madness, the college basketball team with that color uniforms, Oregon, was getting ready to play the Badger mens basketball team in the next step of the NCAA tournament, on Sunday at 6:45 p.m. You can view that contest at some of the aforementioned places, and another choice is Kozy Korner in North Hudson, which specializes in airing these kind of often-decided-by-last-shot telecasts on what is not a day of rest.

– Then on Sunday night, bartender Matt was (finally) wearing a green T-shirt, which he said is one of two such shirts he has available for work, (laundry nightmare)? The other — refer to earlier in the story — is bright red. He said the method to his madness is to wear the green shirt two days a week, so that on those peak nights there is no misunderstanding about his role as a bartender, not a bouncer, as they wear red tops.

The sign said they are “the greatest band ever,” and the team for whom they play isn’t bad either.
The No. 3-ranked women’s hockey team of the Wisconsin Badgers beat North Dakota 4-1 in Fargo to advance to the 1 p.m. Sunday title game in the WCHA Final Faceoff. The ease of the Saturday win may be seen as a pleasant surprise, as when asked earlier in the week about a favorite, owner Ryan of Kozy Korner, which put up that sign, said that it was 50-50, since North Dakota was at home and has become a pesky rival.
That means the team advances to the finals against either Bemidji State or the Minnesota Gophers — making for a border battle — and perhaps more importantly to local people that the Badger marching band will play again at Kozy in North Hudson, at around 8 p.m. Sunday. Bemidji won that semi-final game 1-0.
This is the second chance in three days to see the Badger band there, as they and their pumping horns swung through on the way up to the Fargo area on Friday.
And boy do those horns swing. They once again were the definition of demonstrative early Friday evening, swaying sideways or up and down with every passing second. Despite that speed, there was still time for them to flash a waving hand or thumbs up sign between notes. It was right around 5 p.m. that the two dozen or so members marched into Kozy, and quickly rounded a couple of corners in the establishment, with some of them flipping on through to the back area without missing a beat.
After a quick first number, instructions made their way to the end of the band’s line via both words and non-verbal cues. Soon they would be circling up and around past the kitchen area — or have one of their members with the biggest instrument stand up high inside a booth to toot his horn — taking time on occasion for chant lines such as “when you say Wisconsin …”
The patrons loved it, as a woman just an arm’s length away from one of the players led them in swaying with the band. A pair of young girls stood on their chairs to applaud, and closer-by, two young boys next to the tuba player covered their ears. Between the reactions of the four of them, it appeared the volume was at just the right level.
One of the patrons, a recent transplant from Ohio, said she was heartened by the family friendly atmosphere, and the politeness and attentiveness to the children’s needs even as the music poured out — something you wouldn’t necessarily find in her home state. When she had come in with a relative, they were asking the best place to see the soon-coming show, and the locals said, again politely, that any of the booths were fine, as the band by the nature of their performance would be cycling through the entire area.
The newfound fan from Ohio had even gone out to buy a black Badger sweater, with slightly edgy lettering that was partially in a neon green, for the occasion. She thought this more appropriate than her Buckeye shirt.
To wrap up your weekend, you might want to come early to Kozy and check out Badger men’s basketball against Ohio State, at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, then stay for hockey that night. You just might see someone in Buckeye garb.