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This essay was written by Dan Bynum prior to Winfield 25 (1996) and is reproduced here without his permission.
Let me tell you about Winfield....
Every year around mid-September, 20,000 or so people converge on Winfield, Kansas, population 11,931. For four days and three nights, their universal goal is to stay up as long as they can and soak up as much music (and food and drink) as their tired little bodies can tolerate, and then fall right over. At least, it seems that way to me.
I'm one of those people.
My wife and I consider the Winfield festival to be the finest acoustic music festival on earth. And I know a several thousand close personal friends who heartily agree.
You see, the Walnut Valley Festival is the national championship for just about every acoustic string instrument made. Competitions range from flatpick guitar to hammered dulcimer, with banjos and fiddles and mandolins thrown in for good measure. The four stages (the largest of which is the fairgrounds grandstand) feature continuous entertainment (competitions and professional bands) from early morning until after midnight.
But when the stages close, the best is yet to come.
Around 12:30 or 1:00 in the morning, over in the Pecan Grove among the thousands of tents, over in the RV campground where the truly hardcore bluegrass types stay, the real music is about to start. Pots of coffee are brewed and consumed, in order that the citizens of the night, regardless of age or physical condition, might party hearty until the dawn.
All around are the sounds of instruments being tuned, and the night itself seems to pause and take a deep breath, and gather its energies.
Then, a couple of campsites away, a fiddle and guitar launch into My Rose Of Old Kentucky. A banjo joins in, and we're off!
The hard choice is whether to stay around your own campsite and enjoy the music as it comes (wandering minstrels), or to wander into the night in search of the perfect jam. It doesn't matter, there are no wrong choices.
The music changes as you walk among the campsites. Folk songs blend into bluegrass, and then into an old sea chanty played on a pennywhistle. In the distance, you hear a bagpipe playing (beautiful the first time you hear it, annoying by 4am). And always, the crackling of campfires and the smell of woodsmoke.
For those of us who share this wonderful addiction, Winfield is our Brigadoon and our musical oasis. We leave each year totally exhausted and totally renewed.
Life has slings and arrows enough for us all during the rest of the year.
Winfield is where we go to heal.
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