While the headlining groups were mostly Colorado Bluegrass bands, Shelby Means, husband Joel Timmons and this time around, fiddler Maddie Denton from East Grass Nash filled in for an incredible set on Saturday afternoon for Colorado's 16th Annual Rapidgrass.
Rapidgrass is a small 2-day long festival holding 1,000 people max in the town of Idaho Springs alongside highway 1-70. It's a great change of pace from some of the larger festivals that have taken across Colorado this summer like Rockygrass. Despite a short pause for down pouring rain and some lightning early Saturday afternoon, the festival continued on smoothly. However, they had some big changes from the last few years.
The festival was only offering car camping only this year and as a result there were unfortunately only a few campers due to construction. The new bike path is being built on the festival grounds from the town of Idaho Springs that saw the relocation of the beautiful main stage and other key structures.
This was a special year for the festival because the main band who created it, Rapidgrass released a brand new album the weekend of the festival, so they performed songs mostly from the new record.
However, the highlight of the festival on Saturday was South Carolina group Shelby Means Band, who impressively performed almost for an hour and thirty minutes, the longest time Wildfire Reviews has seen her play out of three total times this summer. They were truly in their element, this time having incredible fiddle player from East Nash Grass, Madie Denton joining them. Maddie was one of the better moments of the entire weekend of Rockygrass when she performed with her regular band, so to see her with Shelby and Joel was no doubt a treat.
The group performed every song from Shelby's brand-new solo record, which has been one of the best releases of 2025 so far. They also performed a number of covers. One of the best songs of the set was 'Wild Tiger Style,' a good face past tune that kept the crowd dancing. 'I'm a Wild Woman myself that likes to attack the bass," Shelby explained to the crowd.
The festival continued fairly late on Saturday night, and despite Rapidgrass being the ones creating the festival, Colorado favorites Magoo continued after their set starting at almost 1030PM. It was a late night.
The festival was worth attending and it was obvious most people in attendance have been there before multiple times, including all the bands.
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