The Kittle Konnection: Pickin' on CF

Jimmy Kittle is a pretty familiar figure at Michigan bluegrass festivals. His ready smile can be seen at the sound board for most, if not all of them, and we’re darned happy that he makes our sound a regular project. We not only get terrific sound out front, (so our audiences tell us), but we also get some good, edgy advice about our music, our stage show, our presence, delivered with the man’s trademark candor, honed, I first suspected, by years of working night shift, where one is surrounded by hard-working people who leave nothing unsaid about one’s performance.

But in fact, Jimmy’s pragmatic, yet artful, approach to life has been sharpened by an experience very different, very close to home, very real, very life-and-death, the specter of cystic fibrosis that has haunted his family.  Nothing concentrates the mind and sets priorities with more cold and deadly earnestness than a crippling and life-shortening illness that strikes down the ones you love. Well, Jimmy doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve about all this; instead, with typical Kittle aplomb, he has tackled it head-on by assiduously raising money for the kind of research that extended his son’s life through a near-miraculous double-lung transplant, enabling Josh to embrace life to the fullest the way his dad does.

So a week from tomorrow we head down to the KC Campground near Milan, MI for our annual appearance at Jimmy’s Pickin on CF festival. We’ll be joined there by some wonderful bands, including Darin & Brooke Aldridge, our old pals from Hardline Drive, Berachah Valley, Wendy Smith, Lonesome Meadow, New Outlook, Lonesome County, New County Grass – (and lots more, see the schedule here) – many of whom are repeat performers like us. We just can’t stay away – the cause is too important, Jimmy is too good a friend, the music is too good to be missed, and the camaraderie is too all-comforting to be left for others to enjoy without us. We hope to see you there!