Yamhill County has in recent years seen a blossoming of new musical events — along with the Walnut City Music Festival held around Labor Day that sprouted forth in 2015, we have also seen the Aquilon Music Festival and the Keynote Concert Series come to life, along with McMinnville’s participation in Make Music Day on the summer solstice.

Come Saturday, another will bloom: the Newgrass Festival, which will draw bluegrass musicians from around Oregon to play in the new LaJoie Theatre at the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg, starting mid-morning and going until nearly midnight.

Bluegrass in Newberg … “Newgrass.” Get it?

The organizer is Christian DeBenedetti, and he’s not exactly starting from scratch. Since 2016, he’s owned Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery, a popular artisan, small-batch operation on his family’s century farm in the hills east of Newberg. In 2021, weary of the isolation borne of the pandemic, he invited bluegrass musicians over for a jam session.

It became a thing.

“Community was something I was really personally seeking out,” he said. The Portland native, who was raised in Newberg, had recently acquired his “dream guitar,” an old Martin, at a pawn shop in Vancouver, so the time seemed right. “I wanted to be more worthy of this instrument and to build community, so I put a note out on Facebook to area musicians and 22 musicians came out, the first time.”

For a few years now, a free bluegrass jam has been held at Wolves & People at 6 p.m. Thursdays. “Suddenly we’re getting 10, 12, 15 musicians a week of all levels; but a lot of very accomplished players, some of whom have had really distinguished careers in music, started showing up all the time.”

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“It’s not a performance, per se, we’re not playing to an audience,” he continued. “It’s a true bluegrass jam, where the artists are standing in a circle, and you play in a clockwise direction, and each artist picks the tune and the key they’re going to perform in. But a lot of people do treat it like a concert and come out every single week.”

That’s how Rachael Bonnett came into the picture. A Newberg resident who grew up playing classical violin, she started going out to the jam session at the farm about a year and a half ago.

“I arrived on a Thursday night one time and I was like, ‘What’s going on here?,’” she recalled. “I was a bit shy for a while but kind of kept going and watching, and then I worked up the courage to actually bring my instrument with me and never looked back. It’s been truly the most amazing musical journey, learning to play bluegrass music like this. It’s all about listening.”

Long before the Chehalem Cultural Center unveiled the finished LaJoie Theatre last summer, DeBenedetti had walked through the space when it was ripped down to the studs with center director Sean Andries.

He asked Andries: What kind of programming are you going to have?

Andries replied: Whatever the community comes up with.

“Right on the spot, at our first meeting, I said, ‘Well, what about a beer and bluegrass festival sometime?’ And he automatically said ‘Yes.’ So it’s been a real pleasure to work with him and his team, and this new venue has wonderful sound, acoustics, lighting, seating, everything about it. It’s great, it’s really the ideal size for these bands.”

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Bonnett has been in on the planning from the get-go, having experience with other music festivals in the area and also having a lot of local connections through her nonprofit work. Now, they’re looking at a scenario where Year One might actually sell out.

“We’re kind of pinching ourselves about that,” she said.

A possible sell-out notwithstanding, the festival begins with a series of events that are free and open to the public.

Corral Creek Bluegrass, which has been playing around the Pacific Northwest and as far north as Alaska for a couple decades, kicks things off 9 a.m. with a concert in the Grand Ballroom. The band features Pam Young on mandolin, Carl Dornfield on fiddle, Ed Fegels on banjo, Paul King on bass, and Ron Taylor on guitar; all do vocals.

Free bluegrass workshops will be held from 11 a.m. to noon, where anyone is welcome to bring their instruments and learn some flat picking with Joe Suskind, harmony vocals with Crystal Lariza, and fiddle licks with Mei Lin.

Finally, the local acoustic band Bootleg Jam, featuring founding members Dave Sumner on guitar, Joel Kiff on banjo, Rob Higgins on bass, and a new member, Dave Poarch on the mandolin, will play in the lobby at noon, no ticket required.

Ticketed events start at 1 p.m. in the LaJoie with Sawtooth & Sons, followed by the Josh Cole Band at 2:30 p.m., the Tuesday String Band at 4 p.m., and Never Come Down at 5:30 p.m. There’s one more free performance from 7 to 8 p.m. by Knuckle Grease Station in the lobby, before things head back upstairs for Broken Compass Bluegrass to close out the evening. Free beer, wine, and cider tastings will be held all day.

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As this story was completed, tickets were going fast but there were still a few left. They may be ordered online here.