For the seventh year, the Indiana State Fingerstyle Guitar Festival will return to the hills of Brown County this month.
Fingerstyle guitar players from all over the country will grace the stage of the Brown County Playhouse Saturday, July 28. The day will conclude with a concert featuring the top three players.
Chicago musician Jack Wilson and Nashville, Tennessee father-son duo Tim and Myles Thompson will close out the concert. They are winners of the International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship held annually in Kansas.
”Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with fingertips, fingernails or picks attached to the right hand fingers. The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking, classical, or thumb style,” the festival’s website explains.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]The community is invited to a kickoff party at the Brown County Inn on Friday night in the Town Hall room for $5. Fingerstyle music also will be playing in the Corn Crib Lounge that night with no cover charge.
“That’s where the competitors all get to come and kind of work out the kinks, work through their nerves a little and really show off to everybody. It’s not so formal as the competition. There’s going to be a lot of great music Friday night,” said festival producer and co-founder Chuck Wills.
Wills and local musician Kara Barnard founded the festival. Barnard also serves as a producer. Wills and Barnard started planning the festival when he was a guitar student of hers.
“She had talked about the International Fingerstyle Guitar Festival in Kansas. They did other events leading up to that, like qualifiers, and that she always thought that would be a perfect thing for Nashville with the music history,” Wills said.
Barnard contacted her friends at the International Festival. Wills and Barnard shared their festival plans with the international festival organizers. “They were so impressed they decided to give us accreditation right out of the gate, which never happens,” Wills said.
Now, fingerstyle guitar players know Nashville as the home of the Indiana State Fingerstyle Guitar Festival.
“What has happened over the past seven years is within the acoustic guitar community, we’ve gotten quite a representation. Everybody says this is the event to go to,” Wills said.
“They love the town, they love the hospitality and they love the sound at the Playhouse. They said this is probably one of the best sounding places that they go to all year long. These people come from all over the country.”
Last year, the festival even had a competitors from Japan and Turkey.
“A lot of the folks that come in are maybe not really used to the small town-type environment. It can be a little surprising that there’s not public transportation. Our group of volunteers pulls together to make sure everybody gets to where they need to go,” Wills said.
Last year, the competitor from Japan had drivers on call to take him to and from the cabin he had rented. “We’re picking somebody up from the airport this year. It’s just the whole small-town hospitality, everyone pulling together,” Wills said.
One of the judges last year told the crowd that they were “one of the most receptive that he has encountered anywhere in the world,” Wills said.
This year’s festival will have more competitors than ever before, with around 30, he said. {span}Each competitor will perform two songs of their choice.
This year’s festival will also feature an art show at the Playhouse, based around guitars.
“The Saturday night concert pretty much always sells out, so we expect about 400 people to come to that,” Wills said.
Because this contest has international festival accreditation, the first-place winner will automatically receive a spot at the international competition.
There are only eight accredited festivals in the world and Brown County’s is one of them, Wills said.
The first-place winner also will receive a handmade guitar from Thomas Roeger in Bloomington. The second-place winner will get a classical guitar by Sweetwater Music Store in Fort Wayne.
Third prize is a hand-built telecaster electric guitar from SDC Guitars in Indianapolis, which is owned by Scott Campbell, a Brown County High School graduate.
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What: Seventh annual Indiana State Fingerstyle Guitar Competition
Where: Brown County Playhouse and Brown County Inn
When:
Friday, July 27 from 6 to 11 p.m. festival competitors will rotate through the open mic stage along with local musicians Cari Ray and Chuck Wills at the Brown County Inn Town Hall room. Tickets will be available at the door for $5 for the Town Hall performances. Lance Allen will perform in the Corn Crib Lounge with no cover charge from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. Cash bar and food will be available in both the Town Hall and Corn Crib Lounge.
Saturday, July 28 at 11 a.m. the competition will begin at the Brown County Playhouse. The final five competitors will be announced at the end of the afternoon competition.
Saturday, July 28, a 7:30 p.m. concert will feature the top three players, plus Tim and Myles Thompson and Jack Wilson, at the Brown County Playhouse
Cost: $15.50 competition; $22.50 concert; $32.50 VIP concert ticket that includes seating in the first four rows and a $40 voucher for a future Playhouse event
Tickets: indianastringfest.com and browncountyplayhouse.org, also available during regular Playhouse box office hours Thursdays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m.
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