Well, the 2023 Twin Bridges Bluegrass Festival is officially in the books, and as far as we are concerned, it went exceptionally well! I would like to thank all of you who took the time to attend, and I certainly hope you are making plans to join us again…and maybe even bring some other folks with you. I would also like to take a minute and thank Dana Escott and all the worker bees at the fairgrounds as I think they all did an outstanding job. This was festival production #20 for me, and working with the Madison County Fairgrounds was nothing but pleasant. I am very much looking forward to working with these folks for many years to come.

Every festival has a “memorable moment”, and ours came on Saturday afternoon when we got pounded by the micro burst. Some awnings, and a few popups were shredded, but there was some wonderful things that happened as well, that showed how the attendees all came together as a family unit. First, when the entire town lost power, it obviously killed our sound system. While the band on stage continued to play, Kirk Cardoso, from Fully Loaded Tacos, immediately came to me and said he had an extra generator in the back of his truck. While he pulled that over the north side door, the fairground personnel started grabbing extension cords. While some of us ran cords, Kirk fired up the generator, and within 20 minutes we were up and running like nothing had happened, and that generator powered us for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Secondly, while there was a torrential downpour for about 20 minutes, inside the pavilion where the music was, we were all high and dry. While leading up to the event, I told people it wouldn’t matter if it rained, I’m pretty sure that drove home the point.

Before the festival, I told the fairgrounds that a whole bunch of people would show up, stay for several days, and when they left it would look like nobody had ever been there. I’m sure they were a bit skeptical about that, but after 25 years of doing this I was confident in my bluegrassers. Late Sunday, after most of the folks had gone, my wife drove the cart around to check, and she found exactly 1 piece of paper. One. You certainly wouldn’t find that level of cleanliness at a rock concert. Thank you all SO MUCH for picking up after yourselves. And you folks who brought dogs to the event…you were awesome as well. 5+ days, dogs everywhere, and ZERO incidents or complaints. Wonderful.

I announced it onstage, but I’ll put it here again…the Twin Bridges Bluegrass Festival is a 100% go for 2024, and the dates will be June 26th– June 30th. We’ll be there…will you?