Raleigh hopes the magic of bluegrass lives on downtown
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The World of Bluegrass Festival during 2019 in downtown Raleigh. Photo: Visit Raleigh
When the Raleigh Wide Open Music Festival hosts its inaugural festival downtown on Friday and Saturday, organizers hope the vast majority of people won't notice much of anything new at all.
Why it matters: After more than a decade in the City of Oaks, the International Bluegrass Music Association's annual conference and World of Bluegrass held its last festival in downtown Raleigh last year, decamping for Tennessee.
- Raleigh Wide Open wants to pick up right where IBMA's event left things — continuing a tradition of free bluegrass concerts up and down Fayetteville Street that tens of thousands of people became accustomed to.
Between the lines: The truth is, most people likely didn't even realize that the bluegrass festival — as it became colloquially known — was attached to the IBMA's annual business conference, since people's only interaction was mostly through the free street festival.
- Local organizers helped birth the free street festival that surrounded the business conference, said David Brower, executive director of PineCone, a music organization that helped organize Raleigh Wide Open and previous iterations of the bluegrass festival.
- "And after year one, the festival became the marquee event," Brower said. We "found that less than 1% of the attendees af the weekend festival interacted with any event that happened during the [IBMA conference]."
Zoom in: The inaugural Raleigh Wide Open will feature a jam-packed schedule across downtown on Friday evening and then all day Saturday.
- Artists playing the free festival include Palmyra, Don Flemons and Stillhouse Junkies, as well as local groups like the Tray Wellington Band, Blue Cactus and Joseph Decosimo.
- Just like World of Bluegrass, the event will have one ticketed concert at Red Hat Amphitheater, with Greensky Bluegrass and JJ & Mofro playing Friday night.
- Additionally, there will be a variety of art vendors and food trucks between all the stages. Find a festival site map here.
What they're saying: Brower says he believes that Raleigh connects with bluegrass and music rooted in North Carolina's history, and he hopes the community can continue to build connections around the music.
- "I'm just craving things where people get together for a shared experience in real life," he said.