NORWICH – People don’t know when it’s going to happen, but they never forget the first time they get bitten by “the bluegrass bug,” Tim Doerfel says.

Doerfel, a classically trained musician, claims to have been “bitten” about 10 years ago. Before that day in Buffalo, he’d figured Bluegrass was pretty lame.

“I was raised in the Rock and Roll generation,” he said. “But I was in awe the first time I heard bluegrass. The music was so intricate. It had so much style and dynamics to it. My wife and I left that concert walking on air.

“You never know who’s going to turn into a bluegrasser,” Doerfel said.

His wife and ten children, ages 1 to 18, make-up “The Doerfel Family Bluegrass,” a traveling bunch from Western New York that’s on the road nearly two-thirds of the year playing gigs from Canada to Florida. They say their musical/semi-theatrical shows are one part Bluegrass, one part “Simpsons,” and one part community.

The Doerfels, along with Mike Tirella and “The Cabin Fever Band,” are co-organizers of the Norwich Family Bluegrass Festival, starting at 1 p.m. today at the Chenango County Fairgrounds.

Unheard of a decade before, Bluegrass – taken to prominence in the 1940s by artists like Bill Monroe, its roots in 1800s Appalachia – is the “glue” that holds this family band together, they say. Tim contends it could also be the glue that brings other families together.