Bluegrass fest to honor music lover


By Betsy Reason
Betsy.Reason@TheNoblesvilleLedger.com

NOBLESVILLE -- Saturday's bluegrass-gospel festival is going to be like a big pickin' party and family reunion rolled into one.




Rich Hubbard is planning a bluegrass festival in honor of his late father, Eugene Hubbard. - Steve Sanchez / The Noblesville Ledger

Pick and grin

Noblesville Police Sgt. Rich Hubbard's Mountain Music in the Forest will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday at Forest Park, Shelter No. 1, 701 Cicero Road, Noblesville. Admission is free. For information or to sign up your musical group, call Hubbard at (317) 776-2928.

Even if you don't like bluegrass or country music, you're bound to have a good time, said Gail Hubbard of Cicero about her family's get-together-turned-festival. It starts at 11 a.m. at Forest Park's Shelter No. 1.
Her son, Noblesville Police Sgt. Rich Hubbard, organized the event and dubbed it Mountain Music in the Forest. He's asking folks to bring a covered dish, a lawn chair and a bluegrass instrument if they have one. They'll spend the day listening to high lonesome bluegrass sounds and a little gospel.
Hubbard is heading up the event in honor of his father, Eugene, who played guitar and dulcimer and loved old-time music. Gene Hubbard worked 30 years for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and died in 2005 from Lou Gehrig's disease. Festival proceeds will benefit research for the illness, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
Many area residents and businesses have donated items and offered to help with the festival since the younger Hubbard announced the event two months ago.
Cicero farmer Rick Sowers donated a hog for the pitch-in. The Guitar Center anteed up a guitar, and local restaurants and businesses chipped in gift certificates for a raffle. Tom Fowler, owner of Noblesville Music Center, is providing a sound system for the six bluegrass groups that already have signed up to perform.
The lineup also includes the Hubbard Family Circle, the fundraiser's opening act. Rich Hubbard, who started playing guitar a year ago, will strum alongside his mom on the dobro while brother Ken Hubbard plays banjo and nephew Jeff Hubbard plays the guitar.
Hubbard's guitar instructor, Homer Pass of New Castle, and a friend, mandolinist Mike Butler, will join them.
Branded Bluegrass, Myra & Friends, By Grace, John Gilmore and Wiley Thompson are among other groups that signed up to take the stage.
Gail Hubbard said the family originally thought of having the festival at her house.
"Everybody could come, play and have a big meal. The more we talked, the more it grew," she said. "We decided to have it somewhere besides here, turned it into a memory of Gene, then Rich kind of took it and ran with it."
Although her son is the official organizer, Gail Hubbard has chipped in money to help with odds and ends and has made phone calls to solicit volunteers and raffle items.
"There's also been lots and lots of praying that this will be a success. Every dollar we get for ALS research means we're that much closer to a cure," said Gail Hubbard, whose husband fought the disease for nine years. "It's heartbreaking to lose someone with ALS."

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