This year is a special one for FolkWest as we plan the 15th annual Four Corners Folk Festival for Labor Day Weekend.

In addition to the depth of talent of the full festival lineup (available on our Web site, www.folkwest.com), this year’s festival will be highlighted with a pair of extra-special headliners: Sam Bush and Ricky Skaggs, both of whom will be backed by some of the best musicians in Nashville.

By age 21, bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs was already considered a recognized master of one of America’s most demanding art forms, but his career took him in other directions, catapulting him to popularity and success in the mainstream of country music. Now the road has brought him back to where it all began — bluegrass music.

2010 marks Ricky’s 39th year as a professional musician, and this 14-time Grammy Award winner continues to do his part to lead the recent roots revival in music. Known affectionately today as bluegrass music’s official ambassador, Ricky has brought the genre to greater levels of popularity in the past few years than the father of bluegrass music, the legendary Bill Monroe, could ever have imagined.           

Beyond his award-winning recordings, Ricky continues to lead the charge in bringing renewed vitality to country music’s most down-to-earth art form.  From a string of high-profile tour dates with the Dixie Chicks in 2000, to his position as host of the unprecedented “All*Star Bluegrass Celebration” which aired nationwide on PBS in 2002, to his participation in the wildly successful, 41-city Down From The Mountain tour — Ricky has become one of bluegrass’ most talented and dynamic performers.

Ricky Skaggs and his band, Kentucky Thunder, will close the day’s show on Saturday, Sept. 4, on Reservoir Hill. 

Grammy Award winning multi-instrumentalist Sam Bush has been honored by the Americana Music Association and the International Bluegrass Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement Award from each organization.

Bush has helped to expand the horizons of bluegrass music, fusing it with jazz, rock, blues, funk and other styles. He’s the co-founder of the genre-bending New Grass Revival and an in-demand musician who has played with everyone from Emmylou Harris and Bela Fleck to Charlie Haden, Lyle Lovett and Garth Brooks.

And though Bush is best known for jaw-dropping skills on the mandolin, he is also a three time national junior fiddle champion and Grammy award winning vocalist. “Circles Around Me,” Bush’s seventh solo album and sixth with Sugar Hill, is an aurally inspiring mix of bluegrass favorites and complementary new songs.

“I don’t know why, but it felt right at this moment in my life to go back and revisit some things that I’ve loved all my life, which is bluegrass and, unapologetically, newgrass,” says Bush. “After all these years of experimenting —and there’s experimentation on this record too — I’ve come full circle.”

Sam Bush fans can catch his closing set on Sunday, Sept. 5, at the Four Corners Folk Festival.

FolkWest, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is supported in part by a grant from the Colorado Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Colorado General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Tickets to this year’s Four Corners Folk Festival are available at Early Bird prices through March 31 by calling (877) 472-4672 or on the Web site: www.folkwest.com.  Information on the musical lineups for both the Pagosa Folk ‘N Bluegrass and Four Corners Folk Festivals can also be found on the Web site.