The small hammock hung between two large cottonwoods.

Andy Brunen walked cautiously around the trees, scanning his crude contraption.

With several awkward steps and a muttered curse, Brunen and his hammock were swinging slowly in the trees' cool shade.

He tipped his straw hat over his eyes. The sleepy bluegrass music saturated the thick summer air.

Brunen has visited the Missouri River Bluegrass and Old Time Music Festival at Cross Ranch State Park for five years. The weekend festival ends today at the park, located west of Washburn.

When everyone else was listening to 1960s rock 'n' roll, Brunen stuck to the backwoods of home-grown bluegrass. He grew up in northern Canada, but often traveled to Arkansas for bluegrass festivals and all-night jam sessions.

"The music is from the heart," said Brunen, now 49 and living in New Salem. "You can sit back and relax because the music isn't trying to be fancy - it just is."

Brunen joined more than 400 music fans Saturday for the festival at Cross Ranch. And he will be back in his hammock today, he said, for the festival's mix of bluegrass and gospel.

After a morning church service, the festival headliner - Blue Moon Rising from Tennessee - will play at 1 p.m. today. Three North Dakota acts, Brothers By Grace, Heart River Band and The Charley Family, will also perform.

Doris Verwey and her husband, Tim, traveled from Winnipeg for the weekend festival. The couple, both members of Canadian bluegrass bands, had their first date in the festival's shaded concert area ten years ago. Tim Verwey also played fiddle with his band at Cross Ranch several years ago, and now he attends the festival's music camp run by local banjo player John Andrus.

Andrus' name echoed through the old-time and bluegrass melodies Saturday.

He taught Jan Booth's son, a bluegrass fan and also suffering from Down Syndrome, to play guitar outside his Minot home. Booth and her husband spent Saturday at Cross Ranch, absorbing the sun and lively music.

Each guitar rift reminded Booth of her son's jam sessions with Andrus, she said.

Andrus took over planning the Missouri River bluegrass festival - selecting local and national acts for the weekend concerts, and running music workshops - after performing at the festival's first year.

While he admits to devoting too much time to plucking out songs on his banjo, Andrus enjoys the smiles after his students master their first bluegrass melody. Bluegrass music, he said, is too friendly to not be shared, he said.

"It's real music, about real people telling real stories," Andrus said. "There are no special effects between you and what you're trying to say in your music."

After the last concerts, Andrus jams with the festival's bands outside their tents in Cross Ranch. Fiddles and mandolins have played into early morning hours, said Cross Ranch park manager Dave Leite, as the musicians stomp out the fast-paced rhythms.

Bass player Ali Keisler performed Saturday with Missouri bluegrass band Cedar Hill. And although she loves the rush of playing to live audiences, the heart of bluegrass comes out in casual jam times, she said.

"It gets too the soul of the music because it's so relaxed," she said. "Music is something within you that just naturally comes out."

And as his toe tapped to the beat of the slow guitar, the music ran deep inside Brunen Saturday.

(Reach reporter Maggie Stehr at 250-8261 or maggie@bismarcktribune.net.)