He Brings the Best of Bluegrass to Salem County

It's a huge job, staging the annual Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival, but you won't hear a sour note from Carl Goldstein.

He has done 45 of them. All music and harmony for him. And the 46th occurs Labor Day weekend -- Sept. 1 to 3 -- when the Salem County Fairgrounds in Woodstown welcomes a rural pilgrimmage of campers and day-trippers alike lured by the rousing music of fiddle, banjo and guitar, an American-roots experience that promises a foot-stomping good time.

Even Goldstein marvels at the mighty evolution of this bluegrass hootenanny. Rewind to 1972, the inaugural Labor Day weekend fest at a campground in Bear, Del., a modest happening still vivid to the festival director.

"It was a primitive site," he recalls. "We rented a stage from the city of Wilmington. It was just a rainy, awful weekend. A couple of hundred people came, but we had a remarkable array of talent."

Close to 7,500 people are likely to pass through the festival gates off Route 40 for this year's edition. It's a potpourri of fan events -- jam sessions, workshops, a children's stage -- and a mainstage presentation of 16 music acts, anchored this year by legendary player Del McCoury and Grammy-winning country band Asleep at the Wheel.

This is all about bluegrass love, not money. Goldstein doesn't make any. At 78, he hasn't missed a beat with this festival, a project he juggled even during his years as a judge in Delaware's court system, but he also shines the spotlight on a 14-member board of directors whose voluntary labors throughout the year are critical to organizing the $160,000 festival, a non-profit venture aided by corporate sponsors and an army of volunteers.

Bluegrass festivals have sprouted across the nation's landscape. It’s why Goldstein is proud that the International Bluegrass Music Association, an influencial industry group based in Nashville, anointed the Delaware Valley festival as its 2016 Music Event of the Year.

"That's quite an honor for us. I think we've built a good reputation," says Goldstein, whose search for a larger festival site led to Salem County in 1990. "There are several festivals around the country that are much larger -- Telluride in Colorado, and MerleFest (in North Carolina) -- but I think we're just below festivals like that."

The stature of this bluegrass bonanza is evident in the artists who sign on to play it. The list over the decades is long, yet it's noteworthy for the many A-listers, from late pioneers like Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Doc Watson, to such contemporary players as Ricky Skaggs, Patty Loveless and Alison Krauss, who have inspired bluegrass fans to find their way to Woodstown.

Goldstein's memory bank of great moments summons the name of Marty Stuart. The country star, now 58, was a child prodigy when Roland White, who'd played with Lester Flatt, invited the young guitarist to perform with his own group, Nashville Grass, at the Delaware fest.