The Burl’s roots music festival is riding the rail again in Lexington
Just over a year ago, the folks operating The Burl got the idea to stage a festival.
Not a festival in the conventional great outdoors sense, but one contained enough to fit in the club’s intimate indoor confines. More than that, they wanted to book acts that catered – at least loosely – to The Burl’s primary clientele of indie country and Americana artists. Once all that was achieved, they just needed to find the right time to present such project.
How about the first weekend of May? Nothing much else happens then, right?
As it turns out, booking the first – and now the second – On the Rail Roots Festival on Kentucky Derby weekend was no coincidence. In planning the event, The Burl discovered a sizable local audience wanted to enjoy their Derby fun without leaving town. A mixture of national touring acts (Billy Strings, Lillie Mae) and local favorites (The Wooks, Blind Corn Liquor Pickers) at the inaugural 2018 On the Rails fest proved a hit. So for its sophomore outing, The Burl beefed up the lineup of national names by booking new generation bluegrass troupe Town Mountain, the Americana duo Jamestown Revival, the Catskills-rooted country-rock quartet The Felice Brothers, folk roots stylist Willie Watson and folk-pop songstress Lera Lynn to compliment an arsenal of local and regional artists (Grayson Jenkins, Senora May, Bendigo Fletcher.) And, yes, it all unfolds on Derby weekend again.
“On the Rail comes during that time of the year when there really isn’t much going on, except for the Kentucky Derby,” said Burl co-owner Cannon Armstrong. “So many people don’t want to leave Lexington, it seems more and more, during that weekend. We just felt like this is a great time to celebrate music, horses and what we’re doing at The Burl. So now we’re in the second year and I think we’ve really amped up the lineup. We were going pretty big for a room our size. In trying to keep it inside the room this year, we wanted to try and max it out as much as we could.”
At the heart of On the Rail is Americana-directed music that The Burl feels has formed the basis of its audience. The trick, Armstrong said, is to provide a performance roster that caters to that following while not being tied exclusively to it. Acts like Jessica Lea Mayfield, who performs on Friday, reaches outside the genre into a more expansive indie-pop base which the Burl also addresses during the rest of the calendar year.
“We don’t want to be a one-trick pony with just country/Americana,” Armstrong said. “We love that genre, but Lexington is diverse, music is much more diverse than that and we want the club to be diverse. But On the Rail is definitely a celebration of what has put on the map.
“Our audience covers a lot of those folks who grew up with country or bluegrass. Then as artists started to get popular, like Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell and Tyler Childers, the music started that move into the popular-termed genre of Americana. It’s not outlaw country, it’s not bluegrass and it’s certainly not pop-country. It was something much more defined by an area. So when those people started taking off, they had to have a place to play. We were situated geographically perfect for that. We knew that bluegrass and Americana were things that were going to be great for Lexington. People like Sturgill and Chris Stapleton are beyond our periphery now. But the people who were aspiring to that genre had to have somewhere to kick things off. So The Burl kind of turned into home base for so many people that were listening to that kind of music and playing that kind of music.
“That’s why we thought a festival would be a good idea. With this year’s lineup, we tried to say true to that, but we also tried to expand that a little bit with the Felice Brothers and Jessica Lea Mayfield. They’re dipping into that genre, but they’re also pretty indie, as well. It’s important for that genre to grow.”
If you go: On the Rail Roots Festival
When: 7 p.m. May 3, 5 p.m. May 4 and 3 p.m. May 5
Where: The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd.
Performing: The Felice Brothers, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Bendigo Fletcher and Wayne Graham (May 3); Town Mountain, Paul Cauthen, Senora May, Grayson Jenkins, Valley Maker and Abby Hamilton (May 4); Jamestown Revival, Willie Watson, Lera Lynn, Ian Noe, Nicholas Jamerson, Luna and the Mountain Jets (May 5)
Tickets: $30 each day (weekend passes are sold out)
Online: theburlky.com
This story was originally published April 30, 2019 at 8:46 AM.