One Lexington music festival is back on. Here’s how they plan to pull it off.

Things looked, shall we say, bleak when Seth Murphy and his organizing team convened in March to plan for the fourth installment of the Tahlsound Music Festival.

This was to have been the time the committee presented its “halfway” event, a concert marking the halfway point to the annual neighborhood gathering staged in the Southland Drive neighborhood (Tahlsound is an anagram of Southland).

Instead, the world turned off. When lockdown conditions were put in place at the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, there was no live music to be enjoyed, much less to be staged or planned for. From there, one music festival after another canceled. It seemed inevitable that Tahlsound would join the pack.

“We were supposed to have our planning party, our halfway event, over St. Patrick’s weekend,” Murphy recalled. “But that’s when the majority of events started to really cancel across the United States. So we’ve just been waiting, watching and getting educated on what other events are doing and how people in the community are responding.”

Needless to say, Tahlsound, as a festival event, was called off. But within the past month, an idea surfaced to stage a simpler, two-act, single-evening concert that would tie into the festival and keeps its name visible.

Enter some new members of the Southland neighborhood, the owners of the Critchfield Meats Family Store. As they prepare to move into a new location on Southland, one vacated by the Save-A-Lot grocery in August, an offer was made to use its parking lot for an abbreviated Tahlsound offering.

“A couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to work with the new owners of the grocery store space,” Murphy said. “The Critchfield folks have been very supportive and great to work with. They’re also very excited to be coming to the Southland community and have something happening in the space there while they’re doing some work on the inside of the building.”

Thus we have Tahlsound Tailgate, a Sept. 20 event that will feature a headlining set by Small Batch, a long-running troupe of familiar Lexington names (Tree Jackson, Reva Williams, Warren Byrom, Robby Cosenza and Scott Wilmouth) with a flair for rustic folk, bluegrass and pre-bluegrass country. Opening will be Hancock & Shouse, a duo featuring Wooks co-founder Arthur Hancock and 23 String Band alumnus Chris Shouse.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen last spring,” Murphy said. “Nobody did. At a certain point, we tossed around ideas about just doing some online stuff, maybe a virtual festival with some old footage of past festivals. Obviously, this isn’t going to be as grandiose as the festival we’ve had for the past three years. But we’re happy just to have an actual event.

“We went to some of the live shows in Lexington. We saw what The Burl was doing. We went to events that the city was hosting at the Beaumont amphitheater (Moondance Amphitheater), looked at the crowds that were coming out and saw that they were following the rules,” he said. “People felt comfortable and safe working within the structure that was there.”

With that, Murphy went about designing Tahlsound Tailgate strictly as a seated parking lot happening. As it turned out, half the job in creating socially distanced spaces for groups of up to eight attendees had already been done for him.

“We’re actually using the parking spaces themselves for those groups, but we’re taking it a step further. Roughly every other parking space will be blocked for distancing. Then within those spaces that are available, we’re going to have color groups marked by balloons. Folks that attend will get a color upon entry. What that does is help with keeping folks distanced properly both coming into the venue and leaving. At the end of the night, we’ll dismiss people by those color groups,” Murphy said.

“It’s a very simple concert event, really. People bring their chairs and coolers as well as a small group of friends to enjoy the show.”

Admission to the event is by a pay-what-you-can donation either by reservation (go to tahlsound.com) or at the gate. Masks will be required except when patrons are seated with their group. Other distinctions: Tahlsound Tailgate will be an early, all ages show beginning at 5 p.m. with a scheduled wrap-up time of 8 p.m. The performance will be held rain or shine.

“We really want to have a safe event in the neighborhood where the community feels comfortable coming out to an outdoor show,” Murphy said.

“Luckily, we’ve had the support of the Southland Association for a while now. They have always been supportive of having the event, but we didn’t want to move forward this year if the neighborhood wasn’t comfortable. We talked to a lot of business owners and residents in the area and wanted to make sure it was something the community wanted. What we got was a resounding ‘Yes.’”

Tahlsound Tailgate

Who: Small Batch and Hancock & Shouse

When: 5 p.m. Sept. 20

Where: Parking lot at 398 Southland Dr.

Admission: Pay what you can

Reservations (required): Tahlsound.com