There is a burgeoning, scrappy young music scene that is making a lot of noise up and down the East Coast, especially during these past five years or so. Many of its protractors affectionately call it “folk-core.”

I mention this because at the 10th annual Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion two weeks ago, folk-core ruled the folkin’ roost.

Sure, the big corporately sponsored stages were still headlined by such bluegrass and Americana rock mainstays as Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, The Drive-By Truckers, The Del McCoury Band, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver and so forth and so on.

Actually, you have to give it up for these headliner folks for basically bringing back old-time music as we know it a few decades ago during the New Grass Revival (both a movement and a great jam-grass group featuring Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and Jerry Douglas).

They got a lot of the aging boomers and some of the younger Gen Xers pulled away from glam rock and back to acoustic guitars and banjos.

They inspired a bunch of real bohemian acoustic rockers like Donna the Buffalo and Rusted Root and Be Good Tanyas and even big pop-grass bands like Nickel Creek to get out there and pave the old dirt roads of country music with a twist of modernity and style.

But the thing was, that renewed scene has now grown into its rebellious teenage years and movements like folk-core and indie-folk are ripping up that pavement left and right as they speed by their predecessors on maniacal musical joyrides.

Folk-core is fueled by kids who grew up listening to punk rock and jam bands and then discovered their grand-pappy’s old cocaine country records and realized that was the true Kerouac-ian road fantasy.

The intensity comes from the purity of muscle and energy and sadomasochism you pour into the banjo or mandolin, instead of the double-stacked amps and effects processors that give modern rock most of its deceptive muscle.

It’s a music that lends itself to shiftless vagrancy because you don’t need all those cords and electrical tape and such – the player can just strap their acoustic instrument across their back and start hitching.

Folk-core and indie-folk were somewhat ushered in by now pop groups/cover band fodder like Old Crow Medicine Show and The Avett Brothers, but now if you were to mention those names to real folk-core disciples it would be like going to an underground punk venue and talking about how much you like Green Day.

By which I mean, it would be received as more than a little faux paus.

For example, I know there’s more than a few of us alternative country and folk music lovers in the area that would like to blow our brains out if we hear “Wagon Wheel” one more time.

It’s like if you read “On the Road” and then thought you didn’t have to read any more books. It’s a great intro to this roving circus of cocaine country, indie-folk and folk-core, but you gotta dig deeper, see the really meaty stuff.

In fact, one could say their were two rival factions of Rhythm and Roots the past few years – those aforementioned Boomers who think they’re hip because they know who Darrell Scott and Scott Miller are and shout out “Johnson City, Tennessee!” every time another band covers “Wagon Wheel” …

And then there’s the throngs of young mountain hipsters – university kids who’ve taken to wearing longs beards and cowboy boots with their skinny jeans. Kids who are all playing banjo and reading Southern novels and figuring out ways to make vegan gravy. Lots of cute little cowgirls. That’s what they are to me, unfortunately and nothing else.

I hate to say it but now that tattoos and crazy hair and piercings and everything are the preppy thing to do, girls who want to be the hot counterculture somethings are going to old print dresses and boots and less makeup and everything, which is very aesthetically pleasing to me in its naturalism, but you just start to see through the fashion and scene intentions of the boys and the girls at these things and it can ruin the music for you a little, being jaded about that.

And then there’s feeling dumb or guilty if you think you’ve played into the whole scene that’s already being sold back to us by vintage apparel companies. But I digress.

Those kids danced with fervor at some of the key folk-core acts like Dr. Dog, The Felice Brothers, The New Familiars, Folk Soul Revival and so on.

And it is a great kind of sound because its danceable and rocks, but it doesn’t blow out your eardrums – it’s music played on all these acoustic instruments but it’s so dynamic you feel the grooves and you got to dance.

For music that can be imbued with that punk traveling man spirit but be understandable lyrically is big for me, and as a writer I love to hear what they have bouncing around in there.

Luckily the $20 ticket price kept a lot of the hoodlums out so it was more people there to see the music and less a huge crowd like that of Blue Plum, but even Rhythm and Roots is starting to get a little too crowded for Bristol’s tiny little downtown.

Beer and bathroom lines and even food vendors were just swamped the entire time.

But listen out there, you who have not yet attended the spectacle: for my money there’s not a more vital, hip and happening place to be in the Tri-Cities any time of year than the Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion.

It’s the only festival in the entire area whose artists are routinely and glowingly reviewed by the likes of Rolling Stone, Paste, SPIN and more.

In short, just make sure you buy your tickets early next year and check it out.

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