2013 – The First Year Without Doc Watson
By Derek Halsey A few years ago, Doc Watson invited Jerry
Douglas up to jam with him on a couple of songs on the main stage at the Merlefest, and it struck me at the time that Doc was well into his 80s and would not be around forever. So, I made a point of soaking up these two great musicians playing together; Doc, a musical hero, playing with Jerry, the best of my gen- eration. Well, two songs turned into six, yet I was
scheduled to be at another stage on the Mer- lefest grounds at the same time. With the music made by the duo sounding so sweet and special, and thinking about Doc being as old as he was, I slowly walked from one side of the path to the other, like a switchback, try- ing to hear the sounds emanating from the main stage as long as I could. Watson is the heart and soul of Merlefest, a
music festival held every April in North Wilkesboro, NC. The event started as a one- off tribute concert dedicated to Watson’s son Merle, who died in a tractor accident in the mid-1980s. Watson was the host, mentor and performer at the yearly springtime get-to- gether until his death last year at 89 years of age. Merlefest 2013 will take place over four days
from April 25-28. This year’s lineup will fill 13-plus stages with a lot of roots music leg- ends, many regulars and some newbies as well. Playing Merlefest for the first time is Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule. Haynes, who grew up in western North
Carolina in Asheville, has been a fan of Wat- son since an early age. I talked to him about his High Country youth a couple of years ago. “There was tons of great live bluegrass in
that area, always,” says Haynes, about Asheville. “I would go to parties where people were playing for free, people that would rather play music than not, and they would sit out on the porch until three and four in the morning playing bluegrass. There are some amazing musicians from that area. I saw Doc Watson many times as a teenager. He’s great. I was always a fan. He’d knock me out, and Norman Blake would knock me out, both of which I saw at a young age.” The rest of the Merlefest 2013 lineup in-
cludes The Avett Brothers, the Charlie Daniels Band, Leon Russell, Sam Bush Band, Donna the Buffalo, Della Mae, the Jerry Dou- glas Band, John Cowan, the Waybacks, Ma- traca Berg, The Del McCoury Band with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Bryan Sutton- David Holt-T. Michael Coleman Band, Michael Martin Murphey, Mountain Heart, IIIrd Tyme Out, Peter Rowan, Nashville Blue- grass Band, Steep Canyon Rangers, Riley Baugus, Red Molly and many more acts. Another headliner at Merlefest 2013 is the
legendary Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who played a pivotal part in the career of Watson. In 1972, the Dirt Band released the seminal hippy-meets-roots-legends, three-album Will The Circle Be Unbroken record, which made a big impact on the music world. In February of this year, the EMI record label remastered and re-released the Circle
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