Courtesy photo

Blueground Undergrass' leader Jeff Mosier (center left, in black T-shirt) will do a workshop before his band's performance on Saturday.

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Music workshops have been a part of FloydFest from the beginning. Across the field from the main stage, there is a faux front porch, where players pick and talk about their craft.

The clinics begin Saturday this year, with "dawg grass" pioneer David Grisman doing a mandolin workshop. Later that day, Jeff Mosier of Blueground Undergrass will join members of New Monsoon and Turbo Pro Project to talk banjo. Other sessions include Tony Trischka on banjo.

Workshops are a high priority for Mosier.

"Sometimes from stage, I can see the look in people's eyes, like they want to ask a question," Mosier said last week. "There've been times that I wanted to stop a concert to check and see if someone had a question.

"My feeling is there's no way to upgrade your personal life more than playing an instrument."

But it's not necessary to play in order to enjoy the session, he said. He's even seen people taking notes, then asked them later whether they play banjo. Turns out, they don't play any instrument, they just like to hear him talk about music. Mosier, an acolyte of Southern jam legend Col. Bruce Hampton, shares Hampton's gift of interesting, esoteric gab.

"I'm glad that FloydFest is doing it," he said. "To me, it makes a festival have even more of a value to people that come. You get to know artists at a more personal level than you can when there's a stage to separate you."

FloydFest co-founder Kris Hodges said in an e-mail that the idea sprang from the first fest's Global Village Ghanaian drum and dance workshops. Hodges met Jon Lohman, director of the Virginia Folklife Program for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, at one of the first Crooked Road meetings. The Crooked Road is the nickname of the Virginia Heritage Music Trail, a state-sponsored tourism initiative that links together traditional music venues in Southwest Virginia.

Lohman will take the stage Saturday night, Hodges said, "performing ... with some masters of the trade, wearing a Shazam outfit."

Mosier will play the Hill Holler stage after his workshop with his reunited Blueground Undergrass. He said the band struggled to get along for years before breaking up in 2002. He put together another version recently but felt as though he was playing in a Blueground Undergrass tribute band instead of the real thing.

"Those guys were great, and they were into a lot of Americana stuff, and I like that," he said. "But that's not what I do. It's got to have Bruce Hampton and Bill Monroe in the middle of it, to do what I do."

The core is Mosier, his brother Johnny on guitar, pedal steel player Mark Van Allen and fiddle player David Blackmon. Blackmon is taking care of his father now, but he personally chose Owen Saunders to replace him, Mosier said.

"I'm having the time of my life playing right now."