The sounds of Kentucky filled the air on Saturday, Sept. 6, at the Kentucky Museum during Sonic Fest, a celebration of the museum’s newest exhibit, “Sonic Landscapes: A Musical Legacy of Southcentral Kentucky.” The festival drew a crowd of 581 people, according to Lisa Williams, the museum’s front desk supervisor.
The exhibit will be on display until December 2030, according to the Sonic Landscape website. The website says that the exhibit aims to showcase the connection between music and Southcentral Kentucky through various artifacts, musical instruments and oral histories.
The idea for Sonic Landscapes began nearly a decade ago as a concept for a Bowling Green walk of fame. Since then, it has evolved into what it is today. Brent Bjorkman, the Director of the Kentucky Museum said. He said he has a lot of enthusiasm about the story.
“We were working on that from 2014-2016,” Bjorkman said. “We had Sam Bush come and do a kickoff. It didn’t really take off, but I had so much passion about the story.”
The idea later grew into a series of interviews conducted by Sydney Varajon, a Folk Studies professor. Bjorkman said she conducted the first 30 interviews with local musicians, record store owners and small recording studios as part of her capstone project when she was a graduate student.
“That body of interviews is the essence of why Bowling Green is so important,” Bjorkman said.
Bjorkman said the estimate for the physical exhibit came to about $1.5 million. He said the Bowling Green Convention and Visitors Bureau believed in the vision of an exhibit like this and donated $75,000 to the project. The museum was also able to get a variety of other community donors, he said.
The final exhibit featured instruments, costumes, posters and other memorabilia. Bjorkman said that the importance of the exhibit is in the voices of those who made Southcentral Kentucky’s music scene into what it is today.
The goal of Sonic Fest was to bring those voices to life on stage with performances from noon to 3:30 p.m, Bjorkman said. The performances featured several musicians highlighted in the exhibit.
One of the performers was local thumbpicker Eddie Pennington, his son Alonzo Pennington and his grandson Caleb Coots. The thumbpicking style is a guitar playing technique. The individual fingers are used to create music rather than a traditional pick, according to Acoustic Guitar Lessons Online. It was popularized in Kentucky by Muhlenberg County guitarist Merle Travis, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
“I’ve been performing for 61 years,” Eddie Pennington said. “I thought it was a shortcut to get rich: it wasn’t.”
Eddie Pennington’s granddaughter, 11-year-old Vaughan Pennington, joined the performance and sang while her family played. She said she’s been singing since she could talk.
“I want to become famous and keep singing, and make a lot of money so I can help out people who lost their homes in storms and make a whole little community for people who are homeless,” Vaughan Pennington said.
Louisville native and attendee Christine Raveneck said she was invited to the event by her friend from Bowling Green. She said she enjoyed the diverse performances. She said she appreciated the inclusive atmosphere.
“It was incredible, absolutely incredible,” Raveneck said. “I loved that there were a lot of young kids, so it was really inspiring to all generations.”
Bowling Green native Max Erskine said he managed the audio for the performances during the Sonic Fest. Erskine owns a local company, Erskine Sound, and said his interest in sound design was a natural progression from his love for music.
“The exhibit was really incredible,” Erskine said. “I got to see both people that I admired, as well as friends and peers of mine, so I feel like they did a really great job putting all of this together. It was a really special experience for everyone involved.”
The day’s festivities ended with a performance by Sam Bush, Bowling Green native, at 7 p.m. in Van Meter Auditorium.
Bush is known as the father of “new grass” due to his role as a founding member of “New Grass Revival” in the 1970s, according to Bush’s bio. He has won three Grammy awards and has been nominated for 14, according to the Grammy Awards website. Bush was honored with an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from WKU in May 2019, Bjorkman said.
Bush performed several of his songs, such as “Revival,” “Bowling Green” and “Stop the Violence.” He returned for the encore wearing his WKU doctoral hood.
At the end of the day, Bjorkman said the event had a lot of goodwill. He said people were very excited about it.
“It was a state of celebrating what this music is about, and people are just getting their day in the sun, and we hope to have lots more of that in the next five years,” Bjorkman said.
