Poconos schools closed due to manhunt for suspect in trooper slaying

Maggie L. Geiger

First Posted: 8/14/2014 What&#8217;s in a name?
A lot if you&#8217;re a budding music festival.
Last year, an event promoting bluegrass music in Tunkhannock billed itself as the Cornstock Acoustic Music Festival. This year, it&#8217;s called the Cornstock Folk Festival.
Same organizers. Same location. Same type of festival. Well, sort of.
Yes, the music is acoustic. But there are different types. And there&#8217;s other activities that bring together a community spirit, hence the substitution of the word folk for acoustic. The Cornstock Folk Festival will be held Friday, Aug. 29; Saturday, Aug. 30, and Sunday, Aug. 31, at Lazy Brook Park, 55 Overlook Road, Tunkhannock. Gates open at 9 a.m.
And while there may be less musical acts, 18 headliners over a three-day period as opposed to 25 last year, the acts are more diverse and more notable. One such act is Cricket Tell the Weather, an indie-string band based in the New York-Connecticut area, which features original bluegrass-inspired music. They were the winners of the 2013 FreshGrass Award. Last year&#8217;s event featured musicians who were friends of the organizers.
&#8220;A lot of people didn&#8217;t know what acoustic was,&#8221; said Jillian Hannigan, who founded the festival along with her husband Anthony. &#8220;People weren&#8217;t used to that term and didn&#8217;t know what type of music to expect. With the word folk, they know that they can hear bluegrass, roots and Americana.&#8221;
But, perhaps, the most notable difference is the addition of other art forms, such as weaving, pottery and even aerial performances. &#8220;I&#8217;m really excited about this,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We really wanted to broaden and invite more artists to the event and have a whole arts community, not just musicians.&#8221;
Patrons also get to become more involved by participating in workshops learning how to play instruments. That&#8217;s what makes the Cornstock Folk Festival and the type of music it represents so different, according to Hannigan, who was trained as a classic flutist.
&#8220;Folk music is really community oriented,&#8221; she said. &#8220;You play as a group, not like a classical musician, who really strives for perfection as a soloist first. In folk music, you don&#8217;t have to be perfect. &#8221;
Campfire jams throughout the park will prove just that as festival-goers get to strum and sing-along, perhaps performing publicly for the first time.
There is a focus on children at the festival as the couple have three children, ranging in age from 5 to 12. A Kids Tent will offer crafts and games. One special attraction is what Hannigan calls &#8220;an instrument petting zoo,&#8221; which enables kids to have a hands-on experience playing a ukulele or mandolin. &#8220;We want to expose children to music other than what they hear on &#8216;American Idol,&#8221;&#8217; she said. &#8220;They can hear other types of music and learn. So many of them don&#8217;t know the difference between bluegrass and country.&#8221;
The 18 acts on the stage will be playing swing, Celtic, bluegrass, jazz, Appalachian, folk, reggae and Americana acoustic rock. Performers include Pappy and Friends with members of Cabinet, RUNA, Cricket Tell the Weather, the Hillbilly Gypsies, Garcia Grass, MiZ, Tim McGurl, the Bog Swing Group, Free Music Orchestra, Dan Johnson, Colebrook Road, Julie and Kris Kehr, Polina and the Pyramids, Sassafras, the Griggs Family Band and the Highgrass Ramblers.
The eats are a real country treat with foods like homemade corn fritters and corn dogs, true Maryland crab cakes, beer battered cod sandwiches, smokey pit style sandwiches and old-fashioned sodas made from 100 percent pure cane sugar and served from wooden barrels.
While the organizers want the festival to be family friendly, for Jillian, it&#8217;s a real family affair. Her parents, billed as the Griggs Family Band, are the main stage openers on Friday. That&#8217;s pretty good considering that last year, dad an accordion player directed traffic and guitarist mom sold T-shirts.
&#8220;This year, we found that a lot more people know about the festival and a lot more people have heard about us, but there&#8217;s still a lot more people we want to reach,&#8221; Hannigan said.

Taking stock of Cornstock