Whether it’s a guitar, banjo or mandolin, grab an instrument and get ready to pick the music at the seventh annual Bluegrass in the Pines.

The festival, which features 10 different bands from around the state and country, begins at noon Thursday, Aug. 25, at the Rosholt Fair Park in Rosholt. Though in its seventh year at the park, the bluegrass event itself has been bringing together traditional bluegrass bands and fans alike for more than 15 years in the area.

“After changing the name and taking a year off changing the venue, we wondered are people really going to connect that it’s the same show, and they did,” said Art Stevenson of Art Stevenson & High Water, festival organizer.

“We had a good crowd the first year (at Rosholt) and the festival has been a success every year,” he said. “People are aware of what we’ve done and how much fun it is, the great bands we’ve brought in.”

Tickets are $10 Thursday and $20 Friday and Saturday; they are sold at the gate, and admission is welcome all day. Camping is available as well with $5 nonelectric tent camping slots and limited electric slots available for $25.

Along with the bands, there will be food vendors, morning instrument workshops and impromptu jam sessions.

“It’s going on all the time, picking and having a bite to eat together,” Stevenson said. “That’s one of the most interesting experiences you can have at a bluegrass festival, to go around and see all the other people who are so talented.”

The festival will be held rain or shine; there is a tent in case of inclement weather. Festival goers are encouraged to bring lawn chairs. The Rosholt Fair Board also will hold antique sawmill demonstrations Saturday, tractor display, and the Pioneer Museum will be open all day.

“I just love it – it’s part of the atmosphere of an old time festival,” Stevenson said. “We’re glad they put on those demonstrations.”

Traditional bluegrass is a mix of English, Scottish and Irish folk Appalachian music, old-time African-American music, string bands and blues and jazz. Typically, songs are folk in nature played in simple traditional chord progressions using only acoustic instruments. It features distinctive vocal harmonies with the mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar and bass.

Bluegrass itself was around in the 1600s, brought to America by immigrants from Ireland, Scotland and England. Songs were written about day-to-day life in the new land and often reflected life in the hills or on the farm. Most often, classic bluegrass is pegged as beginning in 1945 when three-finger picking banjo player Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe’s band, Blue Grass Boys, which formed in 1939.

Many know the sounds of Scruggs and Lester Flatt from The Foggy Mountain Boys band or the Flatt & Scruggs band. Scruggs wrote and recorded one of bluegrass music’s most famous instrumentals, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” which was used in the soundtrack for the film “Bonnie and Clyde.”

That old-time, Monroe-Scruggs style of picking is a feature of Blue River Bluegrass Band from Louisville, Ky., which will be playing for the first time in Wisconsin on Saturday.

Joe Mullins, who has performed at the Grand Ol’ Opry and is one of the top players in bluegrass today, returns this year for a couple of sets on Friday with his band, Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers.

A new traditional band, Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, bring its high-energy performance on Friday night. The group plays similar to Stanley Brothers without sounding too commercial, Stevenson said.

Piper Road Spring Band also takes the stage Saturday, and Milwaukee’s Sawdust Symphony and Chicken Wire Empire both play Friday.

Along with High Water, central Wisconsin’s Sloppy Joe makes appearances all three days as well.

Saturday also features The Combine, a fiddle band from Illinois that plays old-time dance and fiddle music including banjo and guitar.

There is one “total departure from bluegrass,” Stevenson said, in the form of Lumbard/Lloyd/Nigh, who also take the stage all three days. Nigh is referred to as the “boogie woogie piano player” teamed with a “ragtime guitar player” for variety, he said. It will be their first appearance from Cincinnati.

Itinerary for Bluegrass in the Pines includes:

Thursday, Aug. 25

8 p.m.: Art Stevenson & High Water.

9 p.m.: Sloppy Joe.

10 p.m.: Lumbard/Lloyd/Nye.

11 p.m.: Po’ Ramblin’ Boys.

Friday, Aug. 26

Noon: Chicken Wire Empire.

1 p.m.: Sloppy Joe.

2 p.m.: Art Stevenson & High Water.

3 p.m.: Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers.

4 p.m.: Sawdust Symphony.

5 p.m.: No bands, break for dinner.

6 p.m.: Lumbard/Lloyd/Nye.

7 p.m.: Sloppy Joe.

8 p.m.: Art Stevenson & High Water.

9 p.m.: Chicken Wire Empire.

10 p.m.: Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers.

11 a.m.: Sawdust Symphony.

Saturday, Aug. 27

Noon: Piper Road Spring Band.

1 p.m.: Lumbard/Lloyd/Nye.

2 p.m.: The Combine.

3 p.m.: Art Stevenson & High Water.

4 p.m.: Blue River Bluegrass Band.

5 p.m.: No bands, break for dinner.

6 p.m.: Piper Road Spring Band.

7 p.m.: Lumbard/Lloyd/Nye.

8 p.m.: The Combine.

9 p.m.: Art Stevenson & High Water.

10 p.m.: Blue River Bluegrass Band.

11 p.m.: Sloppy Joe.