Thanks to Blues Traveler, roller derby and fans, a Kentucky music festival rebounds

Three summers ago, the Master Musicians Festival sat in about as happy a spot as any live performance event could hope to inhabit.

The annual Somerset summit had just featured Kentucky favorite son John Prine as its headline act, allowing recognition and revenue for the festival to hit a peak. It seemed the only place the MMF could venture was upward. That’s not exactly what happened.

In 2019, a headlining Saturday evening set by Jason Isbell was canceled at the last minute after a thunderstorm hit the festival grounds at Somerset Community College. A year later came the pandemic. You might have heard about that – the one that hit the off switch on the live music world for much of 2020.

“All of us were just kind of numb after the Isbell thing,” said Tiffany Finley, MMF executive director. “We were all like, ‘Oh my gosh. What are we going to do?’ That’s when we started cutting back. ‘Where can we cut?’ That just hurt. We all kind of lost our confidence a little. And that was before COVID hit.

“But I wasn’t going to let everything go down on my watch. This vessel is way bigger than me. The festival has been going on for 28 years and hopefully it will go on another hundred without me.”

What happened next was considerable regrouping. That meant cutting costs, like slashing the budget for performing artists. But it also saw an enhancement to the community aspect of MMF.

After 11 years of serving as the president of the festival’s board of directors (which meant working for free), Finley was named executive director in 2020.

After that, she worked on grants, including one recently awarded under the Save Our Stages Act, a bipartisan action to assist struggling performance venues and festivals passed as part of the COVID-19 Relief Bill. Finley also acquired a charitable gaming license to help raise funds for the festival.

But perhaps the most vital support, which extended beyond MMF’s financial needs, came from Somerset itself as well as patrons of the festival.

“Over the last five or six years, we really brought the community on board. The Roller Derby (the Somer City Roller Derby) now does our bar, so they get the tips for their club. The football teams come out and clean up the fields for us. Our Somerset Junior Woman’s Club is going to be our security team this year. We’ve had the National Guard in the past, but the Junior Women’s Club, I think, is going to be hardcore in checking wristbands and not letting people backstage.

“Then there is all the love from the festivalgoers. Out of $20,000 in ticket sales before we had to cancel (last year) because of COVID, only $4,000 had to be refunded. The rest of the sales were either transferred to this year or donated. It was just very encouraging after the last two years we’ve had. Everyone is coming to bat for us.”

Still, it was a trick to set this year’s MMF in motion for 2021. When the go-ahead announcement was made in March, several summer festivals – including Lexington’s Festival of the Bluegrass and Louisville’s Forecastle – had already canceled. Though there were signs of encouragement, the return of live music on a pre-pandemic scale was still uncertain.

“It was a definitely difficult decision,” Finley said. “We had a lot of conversations about it, but in the end, we just figured if we’re going to have it, we have to start planning and getting it out there. We knew that festivals would be coming back with a vengeance once restrictions were lifted. Canceling it later was always in the back of our minds. Everything we said was contingent on state and local CDC guidelines. So we just went ahead and said, ‘Let’s do it. If we have to figure things out further at a later time, we will.’”

Fortunately, much of the 2021 MMF performance roster was already in place because it was held over from last year. That included a confirmation by Blues Traveler, the veteran alternative/Americana band that was to have been the festival’s 2020 headliner.

“They (Blues Traveler) were the first people we called when we realized what was going on in early 2020. That was part of the deal. ‘Well, do we move the festival to the fall? Let’s talk about Blues Traveler’s availability.’ Then when we realized we were going to have to completely cancel, we just went ahead and spoke to our major acts and made sure they could all do next year. And they were so great. They let us transfer our deposits over, so we weren’t out that money. We had already paid about $15,000 in deposits. On that same note, our sponsors that had already paid us doubled down. A lot of them just went ahead and pledged again for next year. So we felt good early in the year knowing that as long as the guidelines were lifted, we were going to be able to have this festival.

“We’ve been working with our host, Somerset Community College, which is a state-run property, ever since January on a plan. We have beefed up our security to include all of the COVID restrictions. We’ve been able to delete a lot of them, but we’ve kept several of the requirements in. You’re going to see a lot of sanitizer stations, just a lot more safe practice. Obviously, masks will not be required, but we will have masks there for people who have not been vaccinated or would like to wear them.”

There is a bittersweet side to MMF’s return, though. In April 2020, Prine became one of the first celebrity casualties of COVID-19. That his 2018 set at the festival stands as one of the famed songwriter’s final regional performances, one that came during a massive career renaissance, is not lost on Finley. Central Kentucky bluegrass-and-more stylists The Wooks will close Friday’s MMF lineup with a tribute performance to Prine’s music.

“When John got to the festival site in 2018, the first thing he wanted was to be taken to Dairy Queen,” she recalled. “They were one of our hospitality sponsors anyway, so they were right there at the festival. But he wanted to go to the actual Dairy Queen. When he got back, he asked if he could borrow the tourism van. He took the van, driving himself two more times to Dairy Queen that day. He was like, ‘You don’t need to take me now. I know where to go.’

“I tell you, seeing him dance onstage at the festival is burned in my memory. We’ll have bigger festivals, I’m sure, but I don’t know if we’ll ever have another one that special.”

If You Go: Master Musicians Festival

When: July 16 (gates open at 3 p.m.) and July 17 (gates open at 11 a.m.)

Where: Festival Field of Somerset Community College, 808 Monticello St. in Somerset

Tickets: $25 (July 16 only), $45 (July 17 only), $65 (full weekend). Children 12 and under free with adult admission.

Online: mastermusiciansfestival.org

Performance schedule

July 16

Horse Soldier Main Stage

Brother Smith (4 p.m.); Cody Lee Meece (5:30 p.m.); The Local Honeys (7 p.m.); Bee Taylor (8:30 p.m.); The Wooks (10 p.m.); The Wooks Play and Sing John Prine (11 p.m.)

Young Mary Records Stage

Wayne Graham (5 p.m.); Sylmar (6:30 p.m.); Mojothunder (8 p.m.)

Somersessions Tent

Darrin Hacquard (5:15 p.m.); Abby Hamilton (6:45 p.m.); Bedford Band (8:15 p.m.).

July 17

Horse Solder Main Stage

Tommy Cate and Friends (12 noon); Songwriter Round (1:30 p.m.); Driftwood Gypsy (3 p.m.); Kelsey Waldon (4:30 p.m); Devon Gilfillian (6 p.m.); The Steeldrivers (7:30 p.m.); Blues Traveler (9:15 p.m.)

Young Mary Records Stage

Buck the Taxidermist (1 p.m.); David Vaughn Lindsey (2:30 p.m.); Wade Sapp (4 p.m.); Jaime Wyatt (5:30 p.m.); Billy Don Burns (7 p.m.); Morgan Wade (8:30 p.m.); Johnny Conqueroo (10:30 p.m.)

Somersessions Tent

Maria Carrelli (1:15 p.m.); Kuhzin Pawl (2:45 p.m.); Jordan Smart (4:15 p.m.); Wolfpen Branch (5:45 p.m.); Nicholas Jamerson (7:15 p.m.)