Walnut Valley Festival a full circle moment for Cherokee Maidens

This year’s Walnut Valley Festival will be a full circle experience for Robin Macy. The famed bluegrass music gathering is where she camped out in her 20s, learned how to play the G-run and jammed on the same site as a 14-year old Alison Krauss. This time it’s Macy who will be among the event’s headliners, singing with the Cherokee Maidens and Sycamore Swing.

As bluegrass fans prepare to “go Winfield” for five days of music, camping and boot-stomping fun at the Cowley County Fairgrounds in Winfield, Macy, a former Dixie Chick and founding member of the band, is excited to showcase her latest ensemble.

“I’ve been going to the Walnut Valley Festival either as a camper and a picker or playing in various bands – some more famous than others – through the years,” she said. “When the Walnut Valley Festival called us this spring and asked if the Cherokee Maidens would consider being one of their featured acts, we considered it a huge honor. It’s a big opportunity. There’s 15,000 people who grace the Cowley County Fairgrounds for this pilgrimage each year. People come from all points to that haven, as I have since the late 1970s.”

Macy, 55, last played Walnut Valley in 2000, and this is the first time she’ll be doing so as a headliner. The Cherokee Maidens are a trio of songwriters made up of Macy; Jennifer Pettersen, a popular local singer whom Macy taught over a decade ago when she was a teacher at Wichita Collegiate School; and Monica Taylor, a member of the Cherokee Nation who lives in Perkins, Okla., and was featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show. The Maidens are accompanied by Sycamore Swing, a troupe of veteran, crackerjack jazz musicians led by Macy’s husband, Kentucky White.

Macy said that it’s a love of music and a shared passion for the past that unites them as an ensemble. The group formed about six years ago and has mostly done private events and parties until recently. As buzz grew after the invitation to play the festival, they decided to record a full-length album, which was just released and will be promoted heavily during the festival.

“This is pure, unadulterated entertainment,” Macy said of Cherokee Maiden’s music. “This is three-part harmony; sort of The Andrew Sisters meets Bob Wills. It’s a confluence of three singer-songwriters and a fabulous hillbilly jazz combo. A lot of our material is vintage and western …sort of B-sides. There’s not a lot of things that you will recognize on the record, and we did that on purpose. There was a lot of research that went into gathering the material.”

Macy says the band’s music is “an homage to the tallgrass and the shortgrass prairies because we all have Oklahoma roots.” It’s also multi-generational. “You’ve got Jennifer who is 27, and I taught her when she was in algebra class … stick around long enough, and it all rolls back around. Young people are discovering swing dance for the first time.”

One of those young people is Jenny Roberts, a 32 year-old stylist from Wichita. She looks forward to Walnut Valley every year and loves going to camp with her friends and staying up late dancing to the music. She saw The Cherokee Maidens perform last month at the Women for Kansas political rally and found their music to be catchy.

“They’re quite talented, and they know how to really engage their audience,” Roberts said. “I was thrilled when I found out they’d be playing at Winfield. Their music really makes you want to move. It’s so fun.”

Macy said that the Cherokee Maidens have intentionally kept their group a bit under wraps recently so that they could make a big splash with their performance in Winfield.

“It’s going home,” she said. “For me, to go back there as a mature and aging adult is pretty profound because I was going there in my 20s with my tent and my feather bed, camping out for a week, and eating from a can while learning so much from amazing musicians. I’ve been lucky to play there in various guises, but didn’t think I’d be back in this way. It’s an incredible gift to be part of it. Winfield, for some of us, is just where our year starts and stops.”

This story was originally published September 13, 2014 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Walnut Valley Festival a full circle moment for Cherokee Maidens."