After a two year hiatus, the Nimblefingers Festival has returned to Sorrento. Having being smoked out or threatened by fire in the past two years, the festival returned to the Sorrento Centre on Saturday, July 12th. The Festival is focused around a two week workshop where veterans of the bluegrass and trad-folk genres, and is capped off with a day long public festival.

At 4 PM, Kayla Hotte took the stage. Hotte is an Alberta-based guitarist and vocalist. She played an upbeat set that combined traditional bluegrass with country, including a couple of Roy Acuff tunes (whom Hotte called “the man”).

Golden Shoals are an American duo, who met in Boston about 15 years ago. Amy Alvey (fiddle and guitar) now lives in Nashville and Mark Killanski (guitar and banjo) lives in Vancouver. The band combines traditional folk with upbeat bluegrass with a sharp sense of humour.

The Tone Rangers are a Toronto-based bluegrass band fronted by Canadian folk music royalty, guitarist Andrew Collins. They’ve just released their debut album as a group in 2024 and did a rousing set of original tunes, plus a few covers, including Stompin’ Tom Connor’s “Roll On Saskatchewan”

The Lonesome Ace Stringband are Nimblefingers veterans and one of the best known traditional folk bands in Canada. Chris Coole (banjo) and John Showman (fiddle) are both renowned solo performers and session players, and Showman backed several performers at the festival, including Kayla Hotte. Their music is grounded in traditional folk, but unafraid to veer into modern themes and offbeat instrumentation.

John Reischman is based in Vancouver and another veteran of Nimblefingers. He is one of the best renowned mandolin players in the entire world. His set was mostly instrumental, and he was backed by members of his own band, The Jaybirds, and other festival players, including dobro player Miles Zurawell. John was called back for an encore, and the band played a high energy version of “Roanoke” to finish off their set.

Never Come Down are a 5-piece band from Portland, Oregon, playing contemporary bluegrass grounded in 90s style country. Their set of downbeat country and bluegrass was accentuated with a fantastic cover of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”. They were called back for 3 songs for their encore.