Veranda at the 2026 La Roche Bluegrass Festival – photo © Pascal.P Art & Country Gift Music
Hello bluegrass friends! I’m writing to you once again from La Roche-sur-Foron, the small town in the French Alps that, for one week every summer, turns into the center of European bluegrass. This was the 21st edition of Bluegrass in La Roche, and by the numbers alone it was as ambitious as ever: 28 concerts, 22 bands, from 19 countries, and five continents. The festival was nominated again this year for the IBMA’s Event of the Year, and having spent the week wandering between the Main Stage, the Midday Stage, the Luthiers’ Hall, jams in the town square, and the café terraces of the Off Festival, I can tell you the recognition is earned.
While the IBMA, with its yearly gathering of the best of bluegrass musicians and industry professionals, is the gravitational center of bluegrass, Bluegrass in La Roche has steadily become something like the IBMA of Europe. That’s especially true now that EWOB, the European World of Bluegrass, has dissolved, leaving La Roche as the continent’s clear center of gravity. The EBMA, the European Bluegrass Music Association, had a strong and visible presence at the festival this year, running workshops, a slow jam, and a Women in Bluegrass panel discussion.
In this article I want to give a report back on my experiences at this annual festival featuring the best of bluegrass from Europe and beyond for those of you who couldn’t make it, or who were there and didn’t get to see everything because they were deep in a jam with friends they only see once a year. This year I was back not just as a writer, but as a performer — my son Pablo (13) and I played as part of the OFF Festival with our duo, Lonesome Daze.
Wednesday: The Town Transforms
Officially, the festival opens on Thursday, but La Roche has always started a few days early for bluegrass musicians and members of the broader French bluegrass community. A teaching camp runs ahead of the main event, and has, in addition to French instructors, instructors from one of the featured American bands from the festival. They have been mixing in corners and cafes around the town center for days by the time Wednesday evening rolls around, and the OFF festival begins. This OFF festival is where bands often get their start at La Roche, building up to the day stage and the best going on to the main stage some day. It features free concerts on restaurant terraces, like Sweet Sally at Brasserie Mino or the Lonesome Daze set at an intimate and comfortable wine bar, La Roche d’y Vins. By the end of the night, almost everyone has arrived from far and wide, and the music begins in earnest.
Thursday: Opening Night
The festival grounds officially open on Thursday and starts with the aforementioned camp. The student bands formed over the preceding days took the stage first, followed by a concert from their teachers.
Once things start to cool down in the evening, around 8:00 p.m., the Main Stage opens the festival. Thursday night started with Piotr Bułas & Garage Folks, from Poland. Regulars at La Roche (and IBMA) will already know Piotr from the Luthiers’ Hall set up every year inside the festival, and his instruments have a well-earned reputation as some of the best quality available on either side of the Atlantic. This year, after organizers finally caught his band live at the EBMA 2025 summit in Prague, they invited him to bring the act to the Main Stage. It was an energetic set with original songs and instrumentals pulled from their album, Memories Fly Away, and well-delivered covers like Billy Joe Shaver’s Georgia on a Fast Train, and Jimmy Martin’s Tennessee, all delivered with great stage presence. I’m looking forward to seeing them again at the 25th annual Al Ras Festival in Barcelona this November.
Paul & The Alley Cats (Netherlands/Spain) delivered a mid-tempo set, with classic honky-tonk like Merle Haggard’s Workin’ Man Blues, and some impressive western swing style twin-fiddle work. The band consists of Paul Van Vlodrop, legendary mandolinist from the Netherlands, and his Alley Cats: Noah Hassler-Forest on fiddle, plus three top musicians from Barcelona’s bluegrass scene — Lluís Gómez on banjo, Maribel Rivero on bass, and Jorge Rodríguez on guitar.
Kristy Cox Band (Australia/USA) closed out Thursday night. Cox is sometimes called the Australian Queen of Bluegrass, and the band’s performance backed up that claim. They delivered hard-driving, tightly harmonized bluegrass that left no question about why they’d been brought over from Nashville for the festival. Another group not just of the highest caliber musically, but with well-honed stage craft. When a minor technical difficulty hit, Kristy and the band adapted without missing a beat and had the crowd doing the chicken dance before anyone noticed. Catch them when they come to a town near you.
Friday: Main Stage and Lunchtime Terraces
Noah Hassler-Forest (Netherlands/Spain) opened the Main Stage on Friday evening. Noah is an extremely talented fiddler from the Netherlands now transplanted to Catalonia, and a regular at the Barcelona bluegrass jam. His band reflected his dual home base. Lluís Gómez on banjo and Maribel Rivero on bass from the Barcelona scene were rounded out by Thijs Vrolijk on guitar and Joshua ten Doornkaat on mandolin.
No Man’s Land (Denmark/Netherlands/Slovakia/Belgium/USA) followed — the most multinational band on the bill, five countries in one group: Signe Borch on guitar, Kylie Kay Anderson on mandolin, Loes van Schaijk on double bass, Simona Uhereková on banjo, and Esther Duerinck on fiddle. The band has a classic origin story: it started as an impromptu jam in a quiet hallway at the 2025 European Bluegrass Summit in Prague, when Borch and Anderson began picking, some friends showed up, and that’s how great bluegrass bands are formed. For many, by the band’s account, it was the first time playing exclusively with other women. Their individual instrumental chops and sweet vocal harmonies came together in spellbinding performances of originals, standards, and unexpected covers like Bobby Charles’ I Must Be in a Good Place Now.
Ondra Kozák then presented his latest project, New Aliquot, and their collaboration with banjoist David Benda. Ondra is not only one of the most recognized bluegrass musicians and teachers in Europe — he is a stunning multi-instrumentalist who has performed at La Roche more than any other musician, winning the festival’s Band Competition four times in four different bands. For the fans out there, Ondra will be teaching again next year at the Barcelona Bluegrass Camp (March 11-14 2027).
Traveling all the way from East Nashville, The Sentimental Gentlemen brought a lot of energy to the stage. From East Nashville, these guys have spent a lot of time together on some of the biggest country, western, bluegrass, and americana stages as the backing band for Sierra Ferrell, and in fact they had recently played with her in Paris. Really energetic, skilled musicians who played country and bluegrass standards, covers of the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and originals – and they have a few talented songwriters among them.
Veranda closed the night. Hailing from Quebec, this quartet had the rare advantage of being able to present North American music while still speaking French to the crowd — an old-time-inflected mix of fiddle, mandolin, bass, and guitar. Great energy, great instrumentalists, great stage presence. I love “le western” and hearing those great Quebecois voices singing classic country gold, so I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Veranda as they performed in the old time style around a shared mic. If you are interested, they’ll be at IBMA World of Bluegrass in Chattanooga this October.
Also on Friday, the OFF Festival continued during lunch hours. This is where La Roche’s future shows itself. A run of young French acts — Sweet Potato Vine, Strawberry Moon, and Karoline and the Free Folks — gave energetic performances around town despite the occasional rain. Pablo and I, as Lonesome Daze, made connections with local fans at Bistrot de la Gare, singing a few train songs for the intimate crowd at the welcoming café across the street from the train station.
Saturday: Kids, a Panel, and a Full Main Stage
Saturday opened with Kids on Bluegrass Europe (KOBE), now in its fifth year at La Roche, with this year’s students ranging from six to sixteen. Guest professor Marie Scheid, a gifted bassist who had played the festival herself last year, led an inspiring session — though the kids clearly felt the absence of Nathalie Tournier, KOBE’s longtime bassist and a beloved figure in the La Roche community, who passed away recently. They closed their set by reading a heartfelt thank-you message written for her and her fellow KOBE organizers.
The day’s other centerpiece was the Women in Bluegrass panel — a collaboration between the EBMA and the festival, with Christopher Howard-Williams, Edward Fernbach, and Owen Schinkel all instrumental in pulling it together. It was moderated by Kathleen Coker, who sits on the EBMA board and is a musicologist and PhD candidate at University College Cork. Panelists came from two bands playing the festival that weekend: three members of Blue Lass — Ruth Eliza, Abbey Thomas, and Holly Wheeldon — and four of No Man’s Land: Signe Borch, Kylie Kay Anderson, Simona Uhereková, and Esther Duerinck. Translation between English and French was handled by two members of the French bluegrass community, Lucia Legnini , co-founder of the Gloryland Festival , a new bluegrass, old-time, country and cajun festival just outside Paris, whose next edition runs June 12-13, 2027, and Karoline Penot, who had played the Off Festival earlier in the week with her own band, Karoline and the Free Folks.
The panel took up mentorship and allyship, and the role both play in a musician’s development and in sustaining a community of practice over time. Leading naturally to a discussion on how seeing women performing, producing records, and organizing events had shaped each of their own paths. One theme that came through, as Legnini relayed it to me, was a refusal to flatten “women in bluegrass” into one generalized experience; each panelist had a distinct relationship to the music and to the scene, and the conversation made room for all of them.
Perhaps the most actionable theme of the afternoon was about inclusion in practice: the difference between saying “women are included” and actively making women feel welcome.
“We’re grateful to Bluegrass in La Roche for the opportunity to platform this discussion, and we were very pleased with how the event unfolded,” Coker told me afterward. Kylie Kay Anderson, No Man’s Land’s mandolin player and a panelist, put her own reaction more simply: “I was inspired and empowered by the end of the conversation!”
Saturday evening on the Main Stage included Yonder Boys (US/Chile/Australia/Germany), featuring rich three part harmonies, playing originals and covers, including a new take on the old ballad, House Carpenter, and Sweet Sally (US) followed — a power trio out of Oakland, California, made up of Lucy Khadder, Sophia Sparks, and Clare O’Grady – who met at the Oakland School for the Arts. Really talented young instrumentalists.
Then came Country GongBang, South Korea’s bluegrass band and, for readers who’ve followed my La Roche coverage over the years, an old friend of this festival. Long-time readers may remember them from my 2022 dispatch, when they made their western debut here after organizer Christopher Howard-Williams discovered them during a virtual IBMA showcase. Four years and one IBMA grant later, they returned changed — and remarkable. Singing in Korean and English, this set included an original English-language song about a sea turtle, a cover of Golden from the film KPop Demon Hunters, and a heartfelt run through Take Me Home, Country Roads. Coming from South Korea, the musicians didn’t have the standard bluegrass musical exposure, and they give the genre some stretching ability. The bassist occasionally takes up a bow, which makes for a significant textural shift. The mandolin player has a genuinely stunning voice, and the banjo only occasionally locks into a traditional roll. The whole presentation is theatrical, and the result is more cinematic, with unusual care paid to transitions between songs.
Closing the night was the Shelby Means Band, returning to La Roche after a first visit three years ago. Her lineup at La Roche included guests like Ellie Hakanson on fiddle from the Kristy Cox Band and banjo from George Guthrie of the Sentimental Gentlemen. Along with standards and originals, they gave a bluegrass arrangement of Lady Gaga’s Million Reasons. On guitar was her husband Joel Timmons, who stepped up to sing Cottage by the Sea, a song about his coastal South Carolina childhood from his own 2025 debut, Psychedelic Surf Country.
Sunday: Closing Time
Sunday was hot, baking under a clear Alpine sky, but the energy held. The EBMA slow jam drew a crowd of pickers under the champagne tent. And true to form, La Roche saved its most genre-agnostic lineup for last — Sunday evening at this festival has always been the night to wander furthest from straight-ahead bluegrass.
Pablo and I were jamming with some musical friends from France and Germany in front of the collegiate church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, founded in the twelfth century and with a powerful historic pipe organ, and we weren’t able to catch William Jack, an Australian cellist based in London who has built his own style — he calls it “Cellopickin'” — out of a jazz-guitar background applied to unconventional, plectrum-driven cello playing or Blue Lass, the all-female band from Great Britain.
Gadan (Italy/Ireland/US) came next with one of the day’s more intense sets — an interesting run through of Cuckoo Bird, a Galway hornpipe, and Shady Grove. The band came to La Roche’s attention through the Your Roots Are Showing platform; organizers caught them there and decided on the spot to bring them across the Alps.
Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra (Norway) followed with a well-executed set, including a great rendition of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You.
Closing out the festival — and the furthest the night strayed from anything resembling bluegrass — was Yellofox, an indie-Americana band from The Hague built around songwriters Marc Mosmans and Jorieke de Vet, with a full kit behind them. It made for a fitting way to close a week that had, on a certain level, been about how wide the tent of “bluegrass” can stretch.
Final Thoughts
Twenty-one years in, Bluegrass in La Roche is actively shaping what the European scene looks like, one lineup at a time. With EWOB gone and the EBMA leaning further into La Roche each year, this feels like the moment the festival fully steps into the role of Europe’s own IBMA.
And that role is about more than concerts. The distinction Saturday’s panel drew, between letting someone join the circle and actively inviting them into it, is what this festival has quietly been answering for years in the only way that finally counts: with the lineup itself. Across five days, women were on the Main Stage as bandleaders, as instrumentalists, as the whole band. The music lost nothing for it. If anything, the week was proof of how much there is to gain.
Hope to see you in La Roche again next year, July 28th – August 1, 2027.
