Finding the Real Twang: Bluegrass Picking Up Fans like M. D. Culpepper

SHINHOPPLE, N.Y. -- Sitting in the shade thrown by a cordon of motor homes, M.D. Culpepper, 71, doffed his blue baseball cap, which was hand- embroidered with the words Bluegrass Junkie.

"When my wife died on the first of January, people said I should go to meetings," said the retired Kentucky-born coal miner. But instead of going to church, Culpepper sought solace in bluegrass, a raw-boned form of country music in which the singers play fiddles, banjos and guitars, harmonizing over love, usually lost, and liquor, preferably moonshine.

The blend of hillbilly strings and bluesy laments began 50 years ago with Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs.

For most of the year, Culpepper has been on a cross-country musical pilgrimage, traveling to a non-stop series of bluegrass festivals that began in Seattle in January, led to the Peaceful Valley campground here in the Catskills and would continue for him a week later in Texas.

At each stop, he settled in with several thousand devotees for day after day of singing and strumming, barbecue and beer.