Kentucky

Lexington Reggae Fest is back and bigger than ever, with five days of shows

By Matt Wickstrom Contributing writer

July 22, 2025 5:00 AM

Lexington’s Reggae Fest begins on July 23, 2025, and will feature acts including, from top left: The Luv Locz Experiment, Ashley Irae, M’Power Rhythm and Deep Nourished Roots. Photos provided

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Lexington Reggae Week spans five days with shows at multiple venues, starting July 23.
Tahlsound partners with city and artists to revive Kentucky’s reggae scene.
Events feature live music, Jamaican cuisine and collaborations with local acts.

The Lexington Reggae Fest begins this week, expanded to include shows across multiple days in Lexington and a day in Red River Gorge.

The five-day celebration is an evolution of what started as a single-day event organized by the Tahlsound Concert Series in 2023. It also came from wanting to make a bigger event for bands who began traveling from around the country, said co-founder Seth Murphy, including bands like Somerville, Massachusetts’ Mighty Mystic in 2023, Jamaica’s LawGiver The Kingson in 2024 and Florida’s Ashley Irae and Jamaica’s Imar Shephard in 2025.

“Last year we had our first band ever fly into Lexington for the show, which was a big experience for the Tahlsound team,” Murphy said. “This year we wanted to make their time here even more worthwhile with other engagements around the Tahlsound show to maximize their impact here.”

This includes a Reggae Week kick-off in conjunction with Red Barn Radio on July 23, a street party with Thursday Night Live on July 24, a collaboration with the Lexington Art League at the Loudoun House on July 25 and a getaway to Hop’s in the Red River Gorge on July 26.

Finally, wrapping it all up is Tahlsound’s traditional get-together on the Oleika Temple Great Lawn along Southland Drive on July 27.

The shows are helping to fill a void of reggae music throughout the Commonwealth following the dissolution of the Louisville-based Kentucky Reggae Festival, which was canceled multiple times during the COVID-19 pandemic and was last held in 2019.

“That was some people’s favorite party they went to every year and certainly the biggest display of reggae music in the state,” Murphy said. “There’s a lot of people hungry for stuff like that to come back, even outside of cities like Lexington and Louisville, which is why we’ll also be bringing reggae to places like Hop’s in the Red River Gorge.

“It very much feels like this is a shared vision and something much bigger than just us at Tahlsound,” he said.

Further deepening the recently dissolving ties between Kentucky and the reggae community will be Louisville-based collective Deep Nourished Roots (DNR), who the Tahlsound team has tapped to serve as the backing band for both Irae and Shephard throughout the festivities.

Fresh off releasing their album “Indeed” last week, expect to see the group teaming up with Lexington’s Sheisty Khrist — who joins them on their song “Journey” — during Thursday Night Live.

Other musical guests throughout the week include Louisville’s PMA for Reggae At The Gorge and Lexington hip-hop artists Tony Wavy and Elz Bentley. The inclusion of hip-hop music to the programming was to tie in the similar, and underutilized, genre of music locally, Murphy said.

“Finding the right environment to present hip-hop music in Lexington is sometimes challenging, but I think our reggae showcase at Castlewood Park will be a great place to tie it in,” Murphy said.

Although music is the focus of Lexington Reggae Week, Murphy says the party will also feature a taste of Jamaican cuisine with local restaurant Irie Flavors set to bring their menu of fried plantains, oxtail, jerk chicken and more to the Loudoun House and Oleika shows.

It’s all part of the mission of bringing together and lifting people up through music, something the City of Lexington also recognized when they proclaimed it Lexington Reggae Week.

“There’s been a long working relationship between Tahlsound and the city, so I was super excited when I found out they wanted to support us to the extent of having a week-long proclamation for what I think is an under-recognized genre, group of people and ideology present in Lexington,” Murphy said. “Reggae exists to bring good vibes, which is something we could all use more of.”