Big Grass Bluegrass Festival: The Punches Family & the Dillards

The Punches Family

The Punches are a musical family group who make their home in Fredericktown Missouri, nestled in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. Mom and Dad, as well as their twin girls (Brooke and Emily), all play instruments and sing. They have been performing nationwide at churches, festivals, fairs, and special events since 2009. Additionally, they’ve been featured weekly on Great American Gospel TV and Great American Bluegrass TV on over 200 stations across America. Learn more about them at https://thepunches.org/

The Dillards

Rodney Dillard has had a long and varied career resulting so far in two Grammy Nominations, induction into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, a well-known acting stint on the Andy Griffith Show, many other movies, commercials, and TV appearances, recipient of The Outstanding Missourian Award, and worldwide acclaim for his over 50 years of recording both traditional Bluegrass and his own brand of ‘DILLARDGRASS’.  Rodney Dillard as a founding member of the legendary group, ‘THE DILLARDS’ (aka the Darlings) is seen nearly every day somewhere in the world thanks to the still enormous popularity of The ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW reruns.

Rodney continued to modernize and innovate the sound of Bluegrass as he wrote and collaborated to write such now-classic songs as “There Is a Time”, “The Darlin Boys”, “Ebo Walker”, and “Dooley”.

By the late 1960s, Rodney had transformed The Dillards into the driving force creating new sounds in the West Coast music environment. Later, called “The Father of Country Rock”, Rodney was among the first Bluegrass musicians to “electrify” traditional Bluegrass instruments while also adding drums, steel guitar, and orchestra. The band’s unique flare for songwriting and arrangement affected a broad range of important future musicians in the Bluegrass and Pop music world alike. Rodney is credited with helping set the stage for the “Country Rock” movement and burgeoning progressive sounds of Bluegrass.

“I heard Earl Scruggs. I heard The Dillards. I heard them live, they were fantastic. And my ear was just transfixed by the sound of the banjo. And I got one as soon as I could.”

– Steve Martin

“I met everyone at The Troubadour Bar – Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Glenn Frey. We used to sing in the corner of the bar a lot. Doug Dillard and Rodney Dillard would be there and we would do a lot of bluegrass songs together.”

-Linda Ronstadt