Bluegrass Heritage Festival – April 23 – 25th
Mile 0 festival – April 27th – May 1st
Larry Joe Taylor Festival – September 13 – 18th
James Wimmer Bristol Spring Bluegrass – April 9th – 10th
The Calf Fry – April 29th – May 1
Backwoods At Mullberry Mountain – August 26 – 29th
Red Dirt And Barbeque Festival – May 1st
DelFest – September 23-26th
Roots Under The Texas Sky – November 1 – 3rd
The Western Swing Out – May 28-31st
Dr. Ralph Stanley Memorial – May 26 – 29th
Valley Bluegrass Festival – May 1 and 2nd
Moonrunners Music Festival – October 9th and 10th
Texas Crab Festival – May 7 -9th
Bluegrass Island Festival – October 21 – 23rd
Pickathon – July 30th – August 2nd
Palisade Bluegrass Festival – June 11 -13th
The Blue Ox – August 19 – 21st
Back 40 folk Festival – June 3 – 6th
Mountain Music Festival – June 3rd – 5th
Pondstock At Lake Hedke – June 10 – 12th
Stringbean Memorial Bluegrass Festival – June 17 – 19th
ROMP – June 23 – 26th
So Cal Hoedown – June 26th
Camp Greensky – June 3 – 5th
Telluride Bluegrass Festival – June 17 – 20th
Tailgates And Tallboys – June 3 – 4th
Moccasin Creek Music festival – June 17th – 21st
Laurel Cove Music Festival – June 11th – 12th

Windy City Music Festival – July 9-11th
Floyd Fest – July 21 – 25th
Winnipeg Folk Festival – July 8 – 11th
Northwest String Summit – July 15th – 18th
Red Ants Pants – July 21 – 25th
Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival – July 16-19th
The Redwood Ramble – July 15-18th
Red Wing Roots Music Festival – July 9 – 11th
Under The Big Sky Festival – July 17 – 18th
Rockygrass Bluegrass Festival – July 22 – 25th
Master Musicians Festival – July 16-17th
Oyster Ridge Music Festival – July 23-25th
Podunk Bluegrass Festival – August 12-15th
Pickin’ In Parsons – August 3 – 7th
Braun Brothers Reunion – August 12 – 14th
Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival – August 13 – 15th
Fayetteville Roots – August 26 – 29th
Hoxeyville Music Festival – August 13-15th
Symco Hotrod Weekender – August 13th and 14th
Railbird Music Festival – August 20-21st
Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival – August 13 – 16th
Moondance Festival – August 13-16th
Viva Las Vegas – September 9-12th
Merlefest – September 16 – 19th
Americanafest – september 21 – 26th
Doyle Lawson Bluegrass Festival – September 24- 26th
Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival – September 19 – 26th
Chet Kingery Memorial Bluegrass – September 4th
Festival of The Horse – September – 10 – 12th
Dumplin Valley Bluegrass Festival – September 16 – 18th
Oldtone Roots Festival – September 12 – 14th
Bristol Rhythm And Roots – September 10 – 12th
Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival – September 12-20th
New England Shake Up – September 24 – 26th
Freshgrass Bluegrass Festival – September 24-26th
Pickin’ In The Pines – September 17- 19th
Hoopla At Devil’s Backbone – September 25 – 27th
Vine Grove Bluegrass Festival – September 23 – 25th
Firewater music Festival – Sept 30th – October 2nd
Locki’n Music Festival – October 1-4th
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass – October 1- 3rd
Hangtown Music Festival – October 21 – 24th
ACL Fest – October 1 – 10th
Old Settler’s Music Festival – October 21st – 24th
Old Mill Music Festival – November 6 and 7th

I really enjoyed these videos from my friends at Steamboat Winter Wonder Grass, which is one of the 2020 festivals THAT DID actually happen. This video has some numbers from Mr. Billy Strings, Horseshoes And Hand Grenades, The Travelin McCoureys and MORE.

I am currently working very hard to recover my LIVE MUSIC reports and festival articles to you, as well as keep up on other news. I slap it all together into one big website and let you sift through all of the wonderful music on here!

Known Dates For 2021 festivals :

30 A Festival – January 14 – 17th
Mardi Gras Texas – February 16th
Bluegrass 1st Class – February 19th – 21st
Outlaws And Legends – March-19-20th
Best Little Cowboy Gathering – March 12 – 20th
Suwanee Spring Weekend – March 18 – 21st
Heart Of Texas Music Festival – March 19 – 27th
Bluegrass Heritage Festival – April 23 – 25th
Mile 0 festival – April 27th – May 1st
Larry Joe Taylor Festival – April 19 – 24th
Winter Wondergrass – April 9 – 11th
James Wimmer Bristol Spring Bluegrass – April 9th – 10th
The Calf Fry – April 27-29th
Backwoods At Mullberry Mountain – April 29 – May 2nd
Red Dirt And Barbeque Festival – May 1st
DelFest – May 27 – 30th
Roots Under The Texas Sky – May 1st and 2nd
The Western Swing Out – May 28-31st
Rooster Walk – May 27 – 30th
Dr. Ralph Stanley Memorial – May 26 – 29th
Valley Bluegrass Festival – May 1 and 2nd
Moonrunners Music Festival – May 1 and 2nd
Texas Crab Festival – May 7 -9th
Bluegrass Island Festival – May 13 – 15th
Pickathon – June 25 – 27th
Palisade Bluegrass Festival – June 11 -13th
The Blue Ox – June 10 – 12th
Back 40 folk Festival – June 3 – 6th
Mountain Music Festival – June 3rd – 5th
Pondstock At Lake Hedke – June 10 – 12th
Pagosa Folk And Bluegrass – June 4th – 6th
Stringbean Memorial Bluegrass Festival – June 17 – 19th
ROMP – June 23 – 26th
So Cal Hoedown – June 26th
Camp Greensky – June 3 – 5th
Telluride Bluegrass Festival – June 17 – 20th
Tailgates And Tallboys – June 3 – 4th
Moccasin Creek Music festival – June 17th – 21st
Laurel Cove Music Festival – June 11th – 12th
Windy City Music Festival – July 9-11th
The Great Blue Heron – July 2 – 4th
Floyd Fest – July 21 – 25th
Winnipeg Folk Festival – July 8 – 11th
Northwest String Summit – July 22 – 25th
Red Ants Pants – July 21 – 25th
Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival – July 16-19th
The Redwood Ramble – July 15-18th
Red Wing Roots Music Festival – July 9 – 11th
Under The Big Sky Festival – July 17 – 18th
Rockygrass Bluegrass Festival – July 22 – 25th
Master Musicians Festival – July 16-17th
Oyster Ridge Music Festival – July 23-25th
Podunk Bluegrass Festival – August 12-15th
Pickin’ In Parsons – August 3 – 7th
Braun Brothers Reunion – August 12 – 14th
Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival – August 13 – 15th
Fayetteville Roots – August 26 – 29th
Hoxeyville Music Festival – August 13-15th
Symco Hotrod Weekender – August 13th and 14th
Railbird Music Festival – August 20-21st
Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival – August 13 – 16th
Moondance Festival – August 13-16th
Viva Las Vegas – September 9-12th
Merlefest – September 16 – 19th
Americanafest – september 21 – 26th
Doyle Lawson Bluegrass Festival – September 24- 26th
Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival – September 19 – 26th
Earl Scruggs Memorial Festival – September 3 – 4th
Redwood Ramble – September 27-29th
Chet Kingery Memorial Bluegrass – September 4th
Festival of The Horse – September – 10 – 12th
Dumplin Valley Bluegrass Festival – September 16 – 18th
Oldtone Roots Festival – September 12 – 14th
Bristol Rhythm And Roots – September 10 – 12th
Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival – September 12-20th
New England Shake Up – September 24 – 26th
Freshgrass Bluegrass Festival – September 24-26th
Pickin’ In The Pines – September 17- 19th
Hoopla At Devil’s Backbone – September 25 – 27th
Vine Grove Bluegrass Festival – September 23 – 25th
Firewater music Festival – Sept 30th – October 2nd
Locki’n Music Festival – October 1-4th
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass – October 1- 3rd
Hangtown Music Festival – October 21 – 24th
ACL Fest – October 1 – 10th
Old Settler’s Music Festival – October 21st – 24th
Old Mill Music Festival – November 6 and 7th

Hey now Hillberries! We all need something to look forward to and we miss our Hillberry family! Deadhead Productions & Railroad Earth are pleased to announce Hillberry, The Harvest Moon  2021! Taking place 10/8 – 10/10, You can expect three nights of music & camping!

Pre-sale tickets to go on sale soon. Information on RV spaces will be available in the coming months. We will make a decision on if we will allow craft vendors as we get closer to that time.  Stay tuned for more information. This event is approved by the Arkansas Department of Health. Go to the event page for more detailed information on our COVID guidelines. This can be a completely contact less event when adhering to our rules. Stay tuned for more details!!!

Hillberry Festival is one of the festivals that is indeed planning to transpire right now, and although there is no lineup yet, or vendor plans, I wanted to report on this one. I have been working on reporting on festivals all weekend, and making separate articles for them.

While you are visiting here, and we are on the subject of festivals, why don’t we look into some others that currently plan to happen like The Blue Ox Music Festival. Some more that are happening will be ones like Fresh Grass up in Massachusetts.

Giving you a quick look into what is NOT going to transpire as of today for 2021, we have ones like The Great Blue Heron Music Festival has announced they will be canceled. Rooster Walk was another of my favorites that added to the cancellation list.

We’re so very happy to be able to announce Hillberry, The Harvest Moon Festival in Eureka Springs, Arkansas on Oct. 8-10, 2021 in partnership with our friends at Deadhead Productions! We’re cautiously optimistic that fall will have us in a better place, and hope that we can find a way to gather and celebrate live music with public health remaining a priority. Strict Covid-19 regulations will be put in place and followed. Read more about the guidelines on the event page. More info and pre-sale tickets coming soon. See you (safely) at The Farm!!!

Sometimes over here at Gary Hayes Country we admire the work of other people, and the folks over at Honky Tonk Heroes are on that list. Today, they are interviewing a much talked about young lady Miss Morgan Wade. I promise you guys, you will be hearing a plethora of news about her in the future.

This article was published by me, but other than that all of this article was done by them, including all of the questions and graphics. I promise you, I am equally enthusiastic to read this, let alone publish it to you…so without further waiting….

Here

I recently had the chance to stop and chat with my good old friend Mr.Lorin Walker Madsen, who has new music out now. I wanted to stop and share with you the conversation we had VIA instant messenger as of late.

This album is a gathering of new songs except the song “Colorado Man” , which was on the album “The Kind Of Man I Am” from 2013. The other 3 songs are all new, and he will explain of that below:

Lorin Walker Madsen “LIVE @ Archive Recordings” Was recorded back in late January 2020, just before the world would change and shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

I was coming off a short run of shows in Southern California and had a few new tunes that I knew I wanted to eventually record for the next record, but had most the guys there, and available, so I said what the hell. Why not, ya know?

And now, I’m glad I did. The players and band for this live session was built of Taylor Flandro (fiddle/vocals), Raymond Mathews (upright bass), and Eric Watson (drums). My long time friend and owner of Archive Recordings here in Salt Lake City, Wes Johnson manned the helm and engineered, mixed, and even mastered these tracks.

He also tracked and engineered my 2017 release, “Slave of the Road”. We’ve known each other know over twenty years, growing up in the Utah music scene. We’ve now become just great friends who like to fish together and just hangout on the regular (pre Covid of course), but he’s someone I’m extremely comfortable with and trust.

So it was fun to lay these new ones down with him, and anticipate him being apart of the next studio release as well whenever I can get everyone in a studio and room safely again. Three of the four songs from this live session are previously unreleased, and the fourth being a full band version of a song from my debut solo release in 2012 “Colorado Man”, one that I’ve always wanted to put together a full band arrangement for but haven’t for whatever reason up to that point.

The other three unreleased tracks I mentioned I would like to see on a studio release as well in the near future, along with a handful of others that I’ve been sort of been sitting on or cooking up during this quarantined time at home. So again, once the opportunity to get together in a studio environment safely again with the crew you can expect a proper studio record. Most likely a full length.

Other than that, I’ve been spending the last ten months at home in Utah soaking up the extra time off the the road with my little boy and wife. Fishing and enjoying the outdoors as much as possible, and getting back to working on songs for the love of writing songs and playing music.

Sometimes you looses sight of that when you’re spinning the wheels out on the road day in and day out. “LIVE @ Archive” is currently available on all digital streaming and downloading platforms

I haven’t had the chance to stop and check out everyone as often as I’d like to, and I know we haven’t had any new music from Jackson Taylor And The Sinners. I haven’t had a chance to see him since Tumbleweed 2019.

Tomorrow he has a new single coming out, and I will be keeping up with any new music announcements I hear from them. It has  been quite some time since we got any new music from him, and many other bands as well.

I try my best to bring you all of the music I can, from so many other genres that I really don’t always get around to promoting it all at once. However, this is one of the many singles and albums I am looking forward to the most in 2021.

My landlord really likes this new song here, as he is going through a divorce, and he pretty much is self admitting his own blame here on this one. He relates to this song as he himself said he drank too much, and drove his wife away.

This song pretty much sums that scenario up quite well, and I really look forward to more new music from him in the near future. On the flip side of the future, this song holds an ardent relevance to the past. The sound and style of this song are both reminiscent of the many Legends that influenced him…..and many of us.

This video is property of a GREAT Youtube channel called New Hillbilly.Com.
They have some truly wonderful videos over there, and this one I stumbled upon has prompted me to make an article, and share some memories I have of some of them. In the twelve years I have been running the roads hot following bands and festivals, I have encountered most of these Legends on here.

I got the chance to see Mr. Joe Diffie when he was playing one of the smaller venues around town, and I caught many of his package deal concerts backstage. I call a lot of these 3 and 4 artist combo concerts from the 80’s and 90’s. The term package deal is a business term where a tour pairs the same artist from the booking agency, and offers a flat rate for all of them.

He was always a top notch performer, and his set list was never short of unforgettable hits from decades of playing Country Music. I tried to listen to him on the Opry as much as I could, and I still enjoy his music.

I have many memories of his music growing up as a young adult in the 90’s, and before I moved here in 1996 to study this kind of music, I would have cited him as one of my latest influences to pursue a career in the Country Music field.

My later teenage years are filled with a plethora of times bombing around in pickup trucks with his cassettes and later on cd’s. I am an avid collector of vinyl from this era of Country Music, simply because it’s harder to come by due to supply and demand.

Jan Howard was an Opry juggernaut that graced the Opry with her presence for her entire career, and she had that mutual respect for the Opry that so many of them have. She was an honorary member of R.O.P.E. ( Reunion Of Professional Entertainers ) for as long as I can remember.

This is one of her and I and Leonna Williams from one of the R.O.P.E. functions we had, and I had the opportunity to see her many times at the Opry. All of these people I enjoy their albums, to this very day. They all remain in my constant rotation!

As a sincere janissary and follower of Country Music, I feel that all of us owe a debt of gratitude to her and her husband Mr. Harlan Howard as well. Most of the beloved characters of her generation have long since passed on, but to be honest, many of those on the list ARE her ilk.

Some of these folks I didn’t know and Mr. Fuzzy Owens was one of them, but to say I have not studied his legacy is ludicrous. One year at Muddy Roots music Festival WE HAD country Legend Red Simpson, AND Mr. James Hand! I have two separate stories about them there, on different years.

Mr. Fuzzy Owens discovered Mr. Red Simpson and many others. He was the first to record Mr. Merle Haggard as he got out of prison. He was not only a songwriter, he was a manger and handled many of their finances.

Fuzzy Owens was one of the first few people to bring integrity to the paperwork side of the business, when nobody else knew how to. He managed Merle Haggard for over 30 years, and showed Merle how to divide expenses, and how to turn a profit from his music.

He was one of the pioneers of festival insurance and how to take the concept of a festival and capitalize on that. Many of the videos that are out there of his I have indeed watched and studied.

Mr. James Hand was one of those that entered the Country Music game late.However the albums he left behind, and the class he brought to the genre cannot be ignored.

One HOT NIGHT out at Muddy Roots, he played a long set in his classic Nudie suit. He did not include his song “Old Man Henry”, and a few of us were upset about that one. On into the night he took us in the back around a campfire and softly played some acoustic versions of that one and a few more.

Mr. Charlie Daniels was always good to me, both as a friend and a fan. He ALWAYS took the time out to spend time with me and answer ALL of my millions of questions I had for him.

The Charlie Daniels Band was a big big part of my childhood, and along with the many bands that hung around him and toured with him on his Volunteer Jam tours. I did a LOT of work with him and people that were associated with him, and I was there the night he was inducted into the Opry.

I recall seeing Mr. John Prine and Mr. Mac Davis my entire life as well, I recall both of them being guests on the Muppet Show when I was young. All of these people inspired me to become what and whom I have evolved into here.

Another Legend we lost that I covered a lot was Mr. Billy Joe Shaver. I have been to more Shaver shows than almost any other artist I cover on here. Period. He has always been one of the more overlooked members of the songwriting community, and I never understood why?

I covered his set from Tumbleweed 2017 with so much passion and enthusiasm that he himself said it was one of the finest articles anybody ever wrote about him. Mr. Jerry Jeff Walker was another of his ilk that passed away in 2020. Country Music took some ungodly blows in that year.

I did indeed get the chance to talk with him on several occasions and in many states. Many of the questions I had for him were so old and forgotten. he couldn’t recall the answers to. He did  remember much of what I asked of him, but basically I just wanted to LISTEN.

As I was additionally saying above as I was talking about the 90’s stars, Mr.Doug Supernaw and his “Red And Rio Grande” album was another on my young adult years list that shaped me as a fan. I vaguely remember the cassette tape was purple, and it was one of the first cd’s I bought.

In this entire list, and on this entire article here, none other is more special to me than Mr. Charley Pride. As I began to collect vinyl, after getting back on my feet, his album catalog was the first one I completed.

I admired his music and style more than anybody in the world of Country Music after the 60’s era stuff. He sang with  more passion and feeling than anybody I knew, and he was my 2016 album of the year. That album of original music was one of his finest albums of the last 15 years.

He was one of the pioneers of bringing forth some of Country Music’s greatest songwriters like Mr. Jerry Foster and many others as well. He put out album after album of timeless classic Country that will live in our hearts for as long as we allow it to.

One of the few outdoor festivals that I have yet to attend as of yet is The MusicFest At Steamboat. This festival is one of the older of it’s kind, and one of the only ones in it’s area of what it offers the patrons. It is the largest group ski trip of it’s kind in the nation, and it is also one of the longer events I cover in my festival series. This festival usually boasts a 5 – 7 day events period.

For the entire schedule at a combined cost to see each band separately live, you save over 200 buying a ticket to this event. Now to be honest, to take in every act on this roster would be an arduous task in itself.

For the people that ski and enjoy music both, this festival has a great layout in which to plan one hell of a fun vacation week. If you plan your day around the music and skiing, you stay busy. Unless you are like me, where you just stay put for large blocks of time to see a whole lineup of a day’s shows.

This festival is more spaced out, spanning over several different venues, totaling almost 200 hours of music and 7 different venues. All of the artists involved are from the Texas and Oklahoma Red Dirt communities, and usually this is a big job for me. Simply because I like to embed links into all my articles…folks…I cover 275 of them!

As of right now, they have not made any further announcements to the lineup or the logistics of the festival. For now, please read these words from Mr. Kinky Friedman.