Two Kentucky events make Garden & Gun list of top Southern music fests

Aspirational, taste-making publication Garden & Gun is out with a list of nine recommended Southern music festivals, and two are right here in the Bluegrass State.

▪  This coming weekend, in fact, G&G suggests folks check out Owensboro’s ROMP Fest, which gets started Wednesday at Yellow Creek Park. This year’s event, presented as always by the International Bluegrass Music Museum, features the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Punch Brothers, Los Lobos, Yonder Mountain String Band and Rhiannon Giddens, who Walter Tunis says just put on a heckuva a show in Louisville. Also on the bill is Lexington’s The Wooks, just back from the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, playing Thursday and Friday.

▪  In July, Garden & Gun suggests Louisville’s Forecastle Festival, an event that enjoys a growing profile on the national fest scene. “Waterfront views, a bourbon tasting lounge, and Grammy-winning headliners are reason enough to grab a ticket,” Dacey Orr writes, adding that Forecastle has had a knack for presenting artists on their way up, such as Chris Stapleton, whose 2015 stand came just months before a trio of CMA Award wins made him one of the hottest acts in the country. That same edition also featured Kentuckian Sturgill Simpson, who will be back this year playing Saturday evening on the main stage. Fellow Kentuckians Cage the Elephant are also on the this year’s lineup, which includes Odesza, LCD Soundsystem, Weezer and PJ Harvey.

If you like to travel for your tunes, the article also points to some well-known events such as Arrington, Virginia’s Lockn’ Festival and Franklin, Tennessee’s Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival (which is co-produced by Justin Timberlake), and some intriguing finds such as the Wildwood Revival in Athens, Georgia and the Sloss Music & Arts Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.

This story was originally published June 19, 2017 at 11:50 AM with the headline "Two Kentucky events make Garden & Gun list of top Southern music fests."