The Bluegrass and Beyond

I had been meaning for some time to check out the Southland Jamboree, a free bluegrass music show each Tuesday evening during the summer on the lawn beside Collins Bowling Centers-Southland.

I arrived after this week’s show had started, and more than 200 people were there. A great band was on stage, each man dressed in perfect Bill Monroe style: dark suit, tie and white cowboy hat.

It was a classic Kentucky scene until the music stopped and the band leader started speaking — with an Australian accent.

It turns out the band, Bluegrass Parkway, hails from Perth, Australia. Southland Jamboree was a warm-up gig for this weekend’s 35th annual Festival of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park campground.

Band leader Paul Duff said afterward that he wasn’t a musician until he was 18 and walked into a northern Australian pub where a bluegrass band was playing. “I walked out and said, ‘I’ve got to play it,’” he said.

Duff learned to play the mandolin, then learned how to make one. He first came to Kentucky to work and study in the early 1980s, then returned to live in Lexington for a time in the early 1990s. He went back to Australia with a Lexington-born wife, Maria Ketron, and a mission to spread bluegrass music.

“It’s real music …. It has got that universality,” he said, explaining that bluegrass is increasingly popular around the world, especially in Australia and Europe. “I love the sociology of bluegrass music. The sound is great, and the lyrics are about hard times and people sticking together.”

The Festival of the Bluegrass this weekend will include fans from across the globe. Find the performance schedule and other information at www.festivalofthebluegrass.com. And if you doubt bluegrass music’s international appeal, check out the Web site’s online guest map.

Also worth seeing, doing

Visitors also will be coming to Kentucky this weekend for Cycle the Gorge rally and family fun ride Saturday and Sunday at Stanton. It’s a prelude to a summer of racing events at the Red River Gorge that will attract cyclists from around the country.

It’s not too late to register for the rally and family run ride. Go to www.tour-rrg.com.

For a less strenuous tour of Kentucky’s natural beauty, consider booking one of the Suburban Women’s Club’s behind-the-fences tours of local horse farms. This year’s tour dates are June 19, July 17, Aug. 21 and Oct. 16.

The five-hour bus tour visits Chesapeake and Woods Edge farms, with lunch at Chrisman Mill Winery. The tour costs $50, with profits going to the club’s charitable works, which include college scholarships and Operation Read.

The Suburban Women’s Club, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, has been doing these tours for 36 years. For more information, call (859) 624-2338.

If you like contemporary art, Breathitt County artist and former corporate lawyer Theo Edmonds, whom I wrote about in April, is back in Lexington. He has rented space at 351 West Short Street for a free gallery show 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day through June 19.

The show features some terrific work he created during six months in New York. Edmonds has set up a studio in the back of the gallery space, where he is working and eager to talk.

If you like less-contemporary art, you have three more days to see Excavating Egypt, the fascinating show of antiquities at The Art Museum at University of Kentucky in the Singletary Center. The exhibit closes Sunday at 5 p.m. For more information, go to the museum’s Web site, www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum.

For ideas and more information about things to see and do in Central Kentucky this summer, go to the Lexington Arts Council’s Web site, www.lexarts.com, or the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Web site, www.visitlex.com.