EXECUTIVE Q&A

Meet Chris Wadsworth, the man behind FreshGrass

PHOTO PROVIDED BY CHRIS WADSWORTH

Chris Wadsworth, the founder of FreshGrass, outside his home in San Francisco.

BY TONY DOBROWOLSKI

PITTSFIELD

The Brooklyn borough of New York City isn’t known as a hotbed of bluegrass music. But that’s where Chris Wadsworth was living when he heard the music that changed his life.

Wadsworth fell in love with bluegrass and that eventually led him to form FreshGrass, the festival that debuted at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams in 2011. FreshGrass returns in September.

The festival proved so popular, Wadsworth produced a second FreshGrass in Bentonville, Ark., last October. Known mostly for being Walmart’s corporate headquarters, Bentonville is evolving into a hip arts space with a venue that resembles Mass MoCA.

A second FreshGrass festival in Bentonville took place at the end of May, and more festivals at different venues across the country may be on the way.

Chris Wadsworth also has been working on Studio 9, the recording and performance space at The Porches, the inn in North Adams founded by Chris’s father John “Jack” Wadsworth and his wife, Susy. Big things are planned for Studio 9 as well.

We discussed these topics with the San Francisco resident during a recent telephone conversation. The discussion that follows has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

QWhat originally inspired you to start FreshGrass?

AI loved this music from my earliest days. People who love bluegrass often point to a moment when, like, a lightbulb went off. For me, it was when I was 7 growing up in Brooklyn and my folks took me to a bluegrass festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I was

like, what is this stuff? I really dug it. My folks are from Kentucky, so I grew up with this music in my house. It’s been with me from my earliest days and inspired me to be very music-focused in my life. I was a music major in school [at Williams College] and went to graduate school for composition.

QMusic festivals seem to come and go. Why has this one endured?

AI think it’s a unique festival, that’s one of the things. It’s unique in the sense that the campus is unique.

I was talking to [wellknown bluegrass musician] David Grisman. He said, “You’ve got to understand that as music professionals, we play 100, sometimes 200, events a year and the places begin to blend together, but there’s a handful of places that stick out in your mind because they’re so unique and special when you’re there, and that’s what Mass MoCA and FreshGrass feel like because it is such a unique setting.”

I think we’ve hit on something: industrial building, outrageous art and really innovative roots music. You mix that all together and it just feels really good.

I think it’s the combination of different elements that has helped it endure. And frankly, that’s why we decided to start one in Arkansas because it’s a very similar formula.

QWhy did you choose Bentonville as the second site?

AThe opportunity in Arkansas was very similar to Mass MoCA. In fact, Mass MoCA was very involved in the creation of The Momentary, which is the museum in Bentonville where we have the festival. [The Momentary, part of the Walton family’s Crystal Bridges Museum, is a former cheese factory turned arts space.]

One of the things that FreshGrass has done for Mass MoCA over the years is bring a lot of people to the festival who wouldn’t otherwise come to Mass MoCA. So it’s been a great marketing tool for the museum. I think with the new museum, like The Momentary, they were wondering how they were going to attract people, not just inside Bentonville, but outside to be familiar with The Momentary. The festival was a good way to do that.

The younger generation of the Walton family, who are taking over the Walton Family Foundation, is trying to turn Bentonville — and I think [they’re] doing it — into a real, cool, hip, attractive place.

QAre you thinking about expanding FreshGrass anywhere else?

AWe’re in conversations about that. I think again the combination of the setting and the music curating that we like to do does have other places where we can pull it off. There is clearly a limit to how many we can do, but I feel like we could definitely do a third [venue]. We’ve had a few conversations. Nothing has felt right yet, but we continue to look.

We are doing some smaller ones, where we’re doing a sort of “FreshGrass Presents,” where we’ll do three artists in a row just for an evening to get a feel for it. That’s a good way to test the waters.

QWill this year’s lineup in North Adams be different than the one in Arkansas?

AThere might be one or two overlaps. But for the most part, it’s entirely different. It’s hard for me to say if one year is better than the next. But this year feels denser than any year we’ve had in the past.

QWhy did you create Studio 9 at The Porches?

AThat was also something that was a victim of COVID. It was finished [during the pandemic], so it really hasn’t been activated yet except on the recording side. It’s a very unique shape, and it’s a beautiful venue that can hold about 100 people max. So it’s very intimate. We have all kinds of ambitions about how we’re going to program that and tie it into weekend stays at The Porches and things like that.

It also has a state-of-theart recording system. We now have this amazing engineer, Dave Dennison, who’s now based there. He did all the recordings for Jerry Garcia late in his career. He’s a well-known, really respected artist.

And there’s something in there called the Meyer Constellation system. It’s this incredible [sound] system where you can choose the room, basically. You can make it sound like a cathedral. You can make it sound like a padded room and everything in between. As a performer, you can tune it in a way that you would like, and as a recording artist as well. If you want it to sound like you’re recording in Grace Cathedral [an Episcopal church in San Francisco], you can do that. It creates a tone of flexibility for everyone involved, and that’s what’s super exciting about it.

We’ve yet to really release it publicly in terms of putting on shows. We’re hoping to do that starting this summer.

QBased on what you told me, it sounds like you’re interested in making North Adams a hub for bluegrass music.

AA big hub of creativity and innovation, I would say. It goes way beyond bluegrass. We’re in conversations with a lot of classical music performers, jazz performers, even avant-garde composers, roots music, folk music, blues and everything in between. My definition of music is very broad. So when I say roots music it can almost encompass anything as long as it’s real music for real people and real stories sort of from the grassroots level. That can even mean hip-hop and rap, quite frankly.

QI know you live in San Francisco, but do you live in the city or elsewhere in the Bay Area?

AIf you know the city, I live out in the Outer Sunset. So, right at the Pacific Ocean. I live in a fog bank and there’s a little surfer community. I’m a surfer. It feels very different from the rest of San Francisco. It’s like a quiet, little enclave right on the ocean. It’s typically fogged in and very dark and sparse and cold and kind of raw, and I love that. ■