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For every foot of altitude, the tiny town of Telluride welcomed a festival-goer. This year's edition set a new record with a sellout crowd of more than 9,000. Telluride, which sits at an elevation of 8,750 feet, has a full-time population of about 2,200.
The festival officially began when the gates opened at 11:30 a.m. Sept. 12, but campers arrived as early as the afternoon before. The campers, many of whom stayed four nights and left Monday, braved oven-hot days and frigid nights.
For Chris Kutensky from Denver, the inhabitant of a giant tent with a porch cover and a grill, the weather wasn't any inconvenience at all. He'd been camping last year, in fact, when driving rain and gusting winds plagued the grounds.
"It's just good music, good people and good times," he said. "No matter what."
During the day, the festival-goers would mill around the main stage and listen to the likes of Canned Heat, Joan Osborne, John Hiatt and the Ageless Beauties, Big Sam's Funky Nation, the John Butler Trio, G. Love & Special Sauce, Gov't Mule, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and Etta James & The Roots Band.
Beer from 52 different breweries, including Three Rivers Brewery in Farmington, was on tap all day. Some beers were even brewed solely for the festival
But the festival really came alive once the sun had gone to bed behind the western peaks. Almost every tent in the campground became its own main stage. Amateur musicians, playing anything from guitars to washboards, jammed together in groups as large as 20.
Telluride's bars and restaurants stayed open long after hours for the nightly Juke Joints, where the festival's musicians played intimate sets for vastly reduced crowds. G. Love & Special Sauce were originally listed as Saturday night's main Juke Joint, but as the festival wore on there were rumors of a musician change; a secret concert.
It ended up being Warren Haynes from Gov't Mule, ranked as the No. 23 guitarist of all-time by Rolling Stone magazine.
Another Blues & Brews musical highlight occured just as the weather was turning cold Saturday evening. The John Butler Trio already had played earlier in the afternoon and G. Love & Special Sauce were nearing the end of their set.
John Butler came back onstage and played a dual-acoustic version of "Blackbird" by The Beatles with G. Love, a song that was talked about up until the event staff kicked the campers out at 11 a.m. Monday.
Though the festival has grown substantially since its debut in 1994, when it was only a few tents on the main street in Telluride, the atmosphere of friendship and music remains unchanged. Curt Kitzben has attended Blues & Brews since 2001, and couldn't stop talking about the brotherhood shared by most festival-goers.
"I've never seen any animosity or any fights, and I've been coming here for seven years," he said.
G. Jeff Golden: jgolden@daily-times.com
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