Mumford and Sons and Bela Fleck Unite in Support of Telluride Bluegrass Fest

Up high in the San Juan mountain range, some 8,750 feet above sea level, lies beautiful Telluride, Colo., home of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival for 38 years and counting. Every third week of June, it's where mandolins seem more prevalent than electric guitars, banjos are strummed at lightning speed and where a tiny fiddle howls louder than the gusting mountain wind, thanks to veteran musicians and festival regulars like banjoist Bela Fleck, mandolin player Sam Bush and Dobro player Jerry Douglas.

"This is my 30th year here," Fleck told Spinner as the five-man string band Punch Brothers covered the Strokes' 'Heart in a Cage' and Beck's 'Sexx Laws' on the festival's sole stage. "30 years straight."

But while Fleck, Bush and Douglas may be the festival's godfathers, promoters have always been open to younger acts that incorporate the sweet unplugged sounds of bluegrass music on its lineup -- and its veterans are always eager to jump in on a song. This year, along with the Punch Brothers, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival included bands like Mumford and Sons, Trampled by Turtles, Old Crow Medicine Show and the Head and the Heart.

"It's a community. The regulars are guys like me, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Tim O'Brien," Fleck says. "We all love each other but I think we all represent a certain place in the music and a sort of attempt to push it forward. The festival, as sort of keeping us as regulars, when the younger people like the Punch Brothers or Mumford and Sons get to play the festival, they get really excited. They're carrying it on. The festival welcomes that but it also has a broad enough reach. It has the singer-songwriters and rock n roll bands," he says noting big names like the Decemberists and Robert Plant on the 2011 bill.

"I love everything about it," Mumford and Sons banjoist Winston Marshall told Spinner backstage after playing Sunday night. During the band's rainy set, which ended with blue skies and the surrounding mountains snow-capped, fellow member Marcus Mumford would tell the crowd, "We played 30 festivals last year and this was the one we wanted to come back to." The band even nicknamed their recent US run the "Tour to Telluride." Fleck, Douglas and Abigail Washburn, Fleck's wife and fellow banjo picker, would come out onstage during Mumford's set for a more roots- friendly version of 'Awake My Soul,' off the band's debut 'Sigh No More.' Mumford take off for home Monday, where they will finally hit the studio to record new music -- songs like 'Lover of the Light,' 'Below My Feet' and 'Hopeless Wanderer' -- that they played during their set, even getting help from Cadillac Sky fiddle player Ross Holmes, who Mumford have "commandeered" for their next album.

For Marshall, who's been learning the Dobro, playing with Douglas is a highlight. "He's too good," he says humbly.

"They're not bluegrass at all. They are another type of music," Fleck said about collaborating with Mumford. "Mumford and Sons [are] putting the sound of the banjo into pop music, and I think that can only be good because the banjo is not a frightening sound. It's only connected to inbred Southern stereotype of stuff. It's just good to see young people play the music."

Mumford and Sons Perform 'The Cave' on the Interface

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