Lyons is known for many things. Being a gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, for one. The burbling, photogenic churn of the St. Vrain River. A laid-back, neighborly, family-friendly and easygoing feel. The kind of town where dinner means patio pizza and soft-serve, not nightclubs and martinis. It’s a place where you’re far more likely to see toddlers on balance bikes than someone in a cocktail dress. It’s the sort of place where you wake up early, walk the dog, buy something crusty from the bakery, and go for a hike.
It’s not quite somewhere you expect to find a saxophone solo echoing out of a bar at 9 p.m.
Thanks in large part to Planet Bluegrass — the Lyons-based organization behind world-class festivals like Telluride Bluegrass, RockyGrass and the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival — bluegrass more or less has a monopoly on Lyons. It’s what you hear at the brewery on a Saturday night, what you expect from the busker on the corner with an open fiddle case and the trucker hat, what the town has built its musical reputation around for the last two decades…