Madrona Fest starts at 12pm on Saturday, October 3, and the festival kicks off with old-time music workshops for musicians of all levels from 12pm to 1pm.
Be sure to get your tickets to the third Annual Madrona Music Festival by clicking here today!
Old-time music is the string band tradition that came before bluegrass. Bill Monroe grew up playing old-time music and in the 1940s built bluegrass out of it.
Watch: Old-time jam basics
That means old-time and bluegrass tunes are often the same tunes. Old-time tunes are often just played a little slower without solos. And that is why an old-time workshop is such a good place to start if learning bluegrass is your ultimate goal.
This year, we are thrilled to announce that Kendl Winter is teaching banjo, and The Horsenecks are teaching guitar and fiddle. So bring your instrument.
Banjo with Kendl Winter
Kendl Winter lives in Olympia and is one half of the Americana duo The Lowest Pair. She has put out solo records on K Records and Team Love, and her recent work, the Banjo Mantras, came out of daily improvisations on the open-back banjo, worked out in different tunings until they turned into something closer to meditation than practice.
She is one of the best old-time players in the Northwest and we are lucky to have her.
Guitar and fiddle breakouts with The Horsenecks
The Horsenecks are Gabrielle Macrae and Barry Southern, out of Astoria, Oregon. Four albums, tours across the US and the UK, and a sound built on early Appalachian fiddle and banjo music with classic country and bluegrass running through it. Their newest record, In the West, came out on Tiki Parlor Recordings.
Gabrielle came up in the Portland old-time scene and learned the Southeastern fiddle traditions the long way, by traveling to festivals and sitting with the players who carry them. She is teaching fiddle.
Barry played lead guitar in Liverpool for twenty years before he got deep into old-time and bluegrass. He flatpicks, he plays clawhammer, he plays three-finger. He is teaching guitar.
Madrona Fest workshops are the perfect starting point for new old-time and bluegrass musicans
The workshops are at 12pm. The old-time jam is at 1pm. This way Madrona Fest attendees can learn a tune from someone who plays it for a living, and then play together as community with people of all different skill levels. The contra dance is at 2pm and the evening concert starts at 4pm, so by the end of the day you will have heard your instructors play the same music from the stage.
Details
12pm on Saturday, October 3, 2026
Key Peninsula Civic Center, 17010 S Vaughn Rd NW, Key Center, WA
Workshops at 12pm, old-time jam at 1pm, contra dance at 2pm, evening concert at 4pm
Tickets are free with a $25 suggested donation. Workshop space is limited, so grab a ticket as soon as possible and bring your instrument. If you don’t have an instrument, we will have a limited number of loaner instruments available. But please contact us first if you would like to use one of ours.
Madrona Fest is produced by the Huckleberry Collective with support from The Backroads Tour.