When attending a large music festival for the first time, you go through, well, stages.
First you get oriented to what’s where. Then you get acclimated to the environment, discovering interesting, out-of-the-way places and the best routes between them. And as you get comfortable, if all goes well, the music, the setting, and the people cohere into a vibe and a sonic/spatial transcendance. That’s when you know the planning and the travel and the camping have all been worth it.
At FloydFest 2024, in the storybook hills of southwest Virginia, my first epiphany took place around midnight on Thursday, July 25, when I found the intimate Canopy Grove Stage and a place called The Depot just a few steps up the hill. The Depot is a permanent hangar-like building with a coffee shop, a craft beer bar, a wood-fired pizza oven, and a fetching mural of Margo Price. The stage is nestled in the woods 50 yards away with a spectacular audio system that assisted the dreamy improv band Circles Around The Sun as they built a grooving sound world of bass, drums, vintage Moog synthesizer, and guitar. I’d found my happy place, and the good energy didn’t let up for three more days.
What’s wild is that while FloydFest has been taking place annually since 2002, this recent edition was a big orientation experience for its owners and organizers as well. Because between 2022 and this summer, they accomplished the near-impossible task of moving FloydFest to a new site. After returning from a Covid hiatus in 2020, FloydFest jammed along for two more years at its first home, a scenic plateau along the Blue Ridge Parkway. But they’d outgrown their 70 acre site, and when its lease came up, the fest rethought everything from the ground up.
The search for - and purchase of - a new 200-acre site was complex to say the least. Organizers thought they’d be ready for 2023, but permitting and water-management delays ensued, and they had to scrub the event with four months' notice, having sold thousands of tickets and VIP packages and booked dozens of bands. They’d landed Goose, the fastest-rising jam band on the circuit, for example. But all that had to be withdrawn, refunded, unwound, and it was hell.
“This has taken some years off my life, I think, to get us to this point,” the event’s Chief Operating Officer Sam Calhoun told me last weekend on site. “The challenges that we faced at every single corner were incredible.” Engineering the roads, parceling up parking areas, and building a set of permanent structures was one thing. Getting permits and the blessing of the area’s neighbors was even harder. Though the festival was moving only 16 miles, it was crossing the line into Floyd County for the first time, and Calhoun had to win over skeptical civic leaders. Then it turned out the verdant valley they’d selected had vital waterways and wildlife that needed sheltering. FloydFest built almost six miles of fencing to protect the site’s creeks and streams from foot traffic. What came from that is a mingling of nature and infrastructure that works. “Every wetland and waterway is fenced in at this park, and it's beautiful,” Calhoun says. “It becomes like a psychedelic national park with the lights at night. It really frames everything.”
I had never been to the OG FloydFest, so I can’t compare, but many fans I spoke to this year were quite positive about the new site, while noticing that it was a bit more spread out and more of a physical challenge with the hills. Getting from the Main Stage to the Higher Ground stage was a huff, but with ample rewards, including an excellent mid-size stage attached to a large, sociable bar and viewing deck with elaborate timber frame construction and a panoramic view of the grounds. Those lights at night that Calhoun mentioned? Gorgeous. And for those of us who enjoy walking in hilly terrain, the topography was a plus. For everyone else, there were shuttles running at all hours from the low ground to the Grove Stage and the campsites and parking lots beyond.
With almost no hotel rooms within 30 miles and only a handful of Air B&B rooms in nearby Floyd (asking $1,000 a night when I checked this spring), this is a camping festival. People either drive in RVs or load in tents and gear to sites that meander across meadows and through pleasant forests. The hills make it tricky. I saw tents doing their best on slopes of ten degrees or more. But there were also encampments that were clearly populated by folks who’d been coming to FloydFest for years. I saw a virtual fort made of batik tapestries strung between trees and a cluster of tents identified with a psychedelic banner that said Camp Mother F***ing F*** Yeah, and no, I did not party with them.
Festivals live or die with what’s on stage though, and FloydFest hit my sweet spots with a blend of traditional folk, top-shelf contemporary Americana, and the experimental/improvisational genre that’s imperfectly called jam band. With about 100 acts across five stages (not counting the kids’ stage and VIP bar tent stage), and only about 10,000 patrons, it made for a high band-to-fan ratio. The shows were easy to see up close, and the sound engineering was superb. And in my personal/professional estimation, FF came loaded with today’s most important and outstanding male and female artists in country music (Charley Crockett and Sierra Ferrell), a shining star of contemporary bluegrass (Sierra Hull), the hottest new guitar slinger in roots rock (Grace Bowers), and the finest voice going in soul/Americana (Maggie Rose). Beyond always-welcome sets from those familiar figures, I came for a discovery dive into the bluegrass and old-time culture of Virginia, and I was not disappointed.
That regional factor had its home at the Floyd Country Store Workshop Porch Stage, which sounds more humble than it is. Like the Higher Ground bar/deck nearby, it’s a handsome timber frame structure with terraced amphitheater seating. There was always a gathering of fans there for even the newest and localest acts, including early Friday morning where I saw the duo of fiddler/guitarist Raistlin Brabson and banjo player Margo Macsweeny. He’s 26 and she is 14, though he said Margo’s been working on the banjo even longer than the three years he’s been playing fiddle. They kicked out old-time tunes, traditional songs like “New River Train,” and a Hank Williams number.
The FCS stage “gave us the opportunity to share traditional, local music with people,” Brabson said after the set. “We didn’t get this at the old (festival) site.” He and his partner told me that Floyd is a hotbed for Appalachian music, more so than in the surrounding region. The’ve been performing for some time at the long-running Friday Night Jamboree in and around the Floyd Country Store, the town’s hub of culture. “Everybody’s all about it. Floyd is like this bubble where it’s like ‘of course you play old-time music’ and then you go down the mountain and people are like ‘what the heck’s old-time?’” Brabson says. Margo’s take is that “It’s totally normal to go out on the street and jam and not think twice about it.”
Curating this presence for local roots at FloydFest was Dylan Locke, owner of the Floyd Country Store and founder of its associated Handmade Music School. He told me about the store’s mission as “an island of sanity” mixing live performances, regional food, and a modern update on the rural general store. He said the store, which he and his wife took over ten years ago, has had a loose relationship with the annual festival over the years, but with the new site, they took it up a level. “When (FloydFest) moved to Floyd County, and we were in a moment where we were really sort of seeing the power of positive human connection through music and dance, we were like, it's time for us to go into FloydFest, this beautifully done event in our county that is representing Floyd. We can't be absent from it. We need to be there showing them Sarah Kate Morgan, for example.”
He’s referring to the young woman on the stage at the time singing a mix of original and traditional songs and playing the old world instrument in her lap like few ever have. Sara Kate Morgan is a Tennessee native living in Kentucky who’s doing for the strummed mountain dulcimer what Jerry Douglas did for the dobro decades before. Her nimble fretting hand and picking technique open up harmony and lead possibilities that have certainly given me and others reason to reconsider an instrument that seemed too tame and quaint. Morgan also sings in an accessible and lovely Appalachian alto that must be heard, as on her 2023 debut album Old Tunes & Sad Songs.
After her set, I asked her when she’d decided to get aggressive about her dulcimer technique. “When I started playing with a lot of other people, I realized there were some skills and chops I needed to work on in order to make the instrument work really fluidly and well in a band situation,” she said. “It forces me to make innovations on the instrument to accommodate playing in lots of different keys and with lots of different sounds, and being able to play louder because it also was kind of quiet. So innovation has come from having to compete with a fiddle and a banjo and a guitar all at once.” When she plays solo though, you could imagine that it is a fiddle, banjo and guitar all at once.
Back in the world of electrified music, FloydFest gave me a chance to experience two of the most interesting emerging guitar stars on our scene, both in their teens and both sporting shrubbery-sized piles of blonde curls. Grace Bowers has made magazine covers all over Nashville and beyond for her cinematic cool and her reputation as a fierce blues rocker who’s wailed on stage with Susan Tedeschi and Slash, among others. She leads her own funky neo-soul and rock and roll band - the Hodge Podge - but not as the lead singer. That would be the magnificent Esther Okai-Tetteh, a Belmont University student with a high-watt smile and a soaring voice. Bowers shapes the songs with her guitar, playing with restraint and a lot of attention to dynamics and detail. Her fondness for Eastern scales and slippery, sitar-like phrasing will remind folks of Derek Trucks, but Bowers has her own style and so much headroom for growth. Her debut album “Wine On Venus” comes out this Friday. I won’t want to miss another Hodge Podge show here in town.
The other blonde bombshell is Isaac Hadden, already a popular veteran of FloydFest because he’s a Southwestern Virginia native. Now based in Asheville, he embodies the new eclectic Appalachian jam esthetic with a feel for the blues, funk, acid jazz and hip-hop. His long-standing band the Isaac Hadden Project was a larger ensemble that sounded good and greasy on a Friday afternoon at the Higher Ground Stage. But I was more into his newer Isaac Hadden Organ Trio, with its heady jazz fusion and chill rapping from guest Nathan Harris. I found Hadden’s playing more math-y/heady and less overtly emotional than Grace Bowers. Each has its advantages, and when I asked my in-the-know friend if there was hope for a Hadden/Bowers Cosmic Blonde Fro-Down Tour, he said there have been talks!
Speaking of double features, the hottest Sierras in roots music capped off a Friday that, by design, put all female acts on the Main Stage all day. Sierra Hull, besides her beautiful journey from small-town Tennessee mandolin prodigy to bluegrass award-winner to innovative songwriting master, has assembled the most freak-of-nature acoustic band I’ve seen this decade. None of her guys (guitarist Shaun Richardson, fiddler Avery Merrit, bassist Erik Coveney, drummer Mark Raudabaugh) come from the well-known IBMA nominee pool, but if this isn’t an Instrumental Group Of The Year contender, I don’t know one. Their solo-trading on the Béla Fleck tune “Stompin’ Ground” was a tour-de-force of improvisation, collective energy, and band leadership. Then Sierra Ferrell brought her wild Mae West Cabaret look and cowboy-suited band to the stage for a splendid two-hour night-time set. Her vagabond story, her idiosyncratic songwriting and her utterly unique mountain voice make her one of the singular torch-bearers for country music this century.
While I had the same reaction seeing the deeply authentic Texan Charley Crockett on Sunday evening (already an era-defining favorite of mine), the final day also led me to discovering a younger cat with potential for a similar roots breakout. Colby T. Helms released his debut album Tales of Misfortune came out in January to much acclaim. He’s a spunky showman and champion of old time country music who writes with wisdom and sensitivity beyond his 22 years. With his string band The Virginia Creepers (best name ever), Helms kicked out country blues, bluegrass favorites, and incisive, imagistic songs like “Daddy’s Pocket Knife,” which he penned at age 13 while in grief over the loss of his father. In a conversation after his Workshop Stage set, he told me about the influence of his dad (his “hero”) and the mentorship of fiddler Billy Hurt Jr. and about growing into the performing life. And when I asked if the recent surge of distinctive new voices in Americana from the wider region, like Tyler Childers and Kelsey Waldon, had been inspiring as he came of age, he said absolutely.
“All these artists, when we were in high school, didn't have a huge mainstream following, but people our age definitely saw that. In the coming years, they would push more for this type of music, and it encourages people like me to actually get out there and spread the message,” Helms told me. “And I said, hell, I'm just gonna try it and see if it works, and give it my 100 percent and if the people feel as if they want me to keep on going, then they'll keep on coming back.” I told him that based on what I heard in his commitment to his songs and his rap on stage, that he was on a mission for something bigger than himself. “I got a purpose, and I'm very thankful for that purpose,” he agreed.
(There’s more to this conversation, and I’ll be editing it for a future episode of The String.)
Other highlights in no particular order, because they all elevated my experience: young but old-soul folk and bluesman Justin Golden playing at golden hour on the Workshop Stage; the sweet four-part harmonies of Texas country band Wilder Blue on two different stages; whimsical newgrass from the Plate Scrapers out of the DC/Maryland area; a heartfelt and creative tribute to John Prine by the Tree of Forgiveness Band; Canadian songwriter and String alumnus Cat Clyde on the Main Stage; Virginia native now Nashville-based songwriting mandolinist Addie Levy leading a tight and right bluegrass band on release day of her self-titled debut album; Leftover Salmon hosting a multi-guest late night revue; and the phascinating, phunky, Phish-like quartet Eggy playing an hour that was so entertaining I went back for another hour the next day.
Having come more than six hours to experience FloydFest I committed to staying through the final notes of Sunday night, and I’m glad I did. As I made clear in the intro to our recent interview, I am an outspoken fan of Nashville songwriter and singer Maggie Rose, because she writes pop songs with depth and makes carefully constructed, classic sounding records. And her live show is even more impactful, given her uncanny pitch and power. Her main stage set on Saturday was very good, but with the creek that runs between the stage and the audience, she and her cracking band seemed far away. Sunday night’s festival closing Maggie set was in the mid-sized Oasis stage, where about 2,000 of us crammed up close for the most ferocious and edgy show I’ve seen her perform. Her FU song “Fake Flowers” slammed my chest, while her recent album’s title cut “No One Gets Out Alive” soared like a cinema score.
Roots music and drama can actually go together. FloydFest held space for both.
