Bluff Mountain is 'a festival about community'; celebrates 26th year

HOT SPRINGS - Every year, local residents pencil in the date of Bluff Mountain Festival as a "can't miss" opportunity to see some of the best local music on a Saturday in June at Hot Springs Resort and Spa grounds.

This year's event, which will take place June 10 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. at the resort, will mark the festival's 26th event.

The festival was started as a way to publicize and fight the planned logging of Bluff Mountain Wilderness. After this effort was successful, the event was transformed into a fundraiser for the MCAC and other local nonprofits.

"A lot of people hunt, fish and hike there, and you've got this really cool coalition of bear hunters and back-to-the-landers and Hot Springs natives who just wanted to keep the wilderness," said Brandon Johnson, who first worked the festival in 2008.

Johnson, who will also emcee the event this year, is the festival's director.

Bluff Mountain Festival serves as a fundraiser for Madison County Arts Council.

There will be a silent auction this year, which will help fund the the Junior Appalachian Musicians, a program for fourth through eighth grade musicians organized by the state Arts Council.

Madison County JAM students will also be performing a set at the festival.

“This is a great event,” said Laura Boosinger, Madison County Arts Council's executive director. “For 26 years now, folks have looked forward to a family-friendly day of good music and fellowship. We are honored to serve the residents and nonprofits of Madison County with the production of this well-loved event.”

Even given its 26-year history, this year's festival may be Bluff Mountain's biggest event yet.

For Johnson, who grew up in Lenoir, the event serves as a way to honor and celebrate the rich tradition of music and dance in Madison County and the region.

"I think Bluff is a little bit unique in that, I've always wanted it to be ... we get people every year from wherever — people just looking for tour stops," Johnson said. "I've just kind of ignored those because I want it to be a Western North Carolina thing for the community and people who've been there. That's not necessarily something everybody would say, but that's the way I look at it.

"We don't need other people to have a badass festival, frankly. The festival's about community. So, we don't need anybody that nobody knows coming in and playing. To me, that's not what it's about. They always had ballads and they always had dancers. I worked really hard to keep ballads and to keep dance a part of it. It doesn't happen without those, in my mind, because all those are substantial pieces of what music is in Madison County."

In addition to the JAM students, musical acts include The Stoney Creek Boys, White Rock Revival, David Hughes, The Appalachian Heartstrings, the Green Grass Cloggers, Travis Stuart and many more.

Johnson served on the festival board from 2013-16, but his background working the festival goes back further than that.

"When I started, I was a student at Mars Hill, and I was a Bonner Scholar, which requires community service hours," Johnson said. "So, I got hooked up with the Arts Council to work the Bluff, and this was in '07. So, I interned there, and the internship started as a way for me to work the Bluff because I loved music, but then I became de facto staff at the Arts Council."

Now, Johnson works for Blue Ridge National Heritage Area and serves as program director for BRNHA's Blue Ridge Music Trails program.

The festival's artist vendor booths are always a popular feature of the festival as well, according to Boosinger.

"Each year our artist market features a wide variety of art and craft and provides a one-of-a-kind shopping opportunity," the Madison County Arts Council executive director said. "In keeping with the fundraising theme, most artists will be donating a piece of their work to the popular silent auction. Food vendors will sell a selection of home-cooked delights, as part of the festival’s longtime mission, to be both a catalyst and meeting point for community togetherness, friendship and support."

'Family reunion' atmosphere

That "community togetherness" will be on display among Hot Springs residents, who look forward to the event every year, Johnson said.

"It's a very big deal, and the thing about it, it's been going so long that I wouldn't want to start a new festival. This festival is so ingrained that people just plan on it," the festival director said.

Pat Franklin, board chair for Marshall music venue The Depot, joked that when the festival started in the late '90s, she thought it was "some sort of a hippie outlaw gathering."

"But then after I went one time, you couldn't keep me away from it," Franklin said. "It's free. There are people sitting everywhere on blankets — all ages, little kids and old people. It's just a good festival. It's a community."

While Johnson has had the fortune of receiving mentorship from Madison County legend fiddle player Bobby Hicks, he said he's had the opportunity of forging lifelong friendships with people like Franklin and Hot Springs resident Rodney Harrison, a former director of the festival.

"I was a college kid, and they said, 'We're going to do this festival,' and I had no idea what that meant," Johnson said.

Franklin and Johnson said witnessing the camaraderie between both the performers and the young JAM musicians is one of the most special aspects of the festival.

"The junior musicians, just watching them interact with each other and play together, it's a great thing," Franklin said.

"It's one of those annual things where musicians, that group of people see people they don't see any other time," Johnson said.

Franklin and Johnson said the festival is "like a family reunion" among the performers and attendees alike.

According to Boosinger, the spirit embedded in the festival's DNA at its foundation, its original mission, has been honored and validated after the Arts Council was informed that Bluff Mountain has been zoned an "ecological interest area," and will receive protective status from the U.S. Forest Service.

"This festival can now celebrate that milestone effort as well as a renewed vision of community involvement and public resolve," Boosinger said.

For more information, contact the Madison County Arts Council at 828-649-1301 or by visiting www.madisoncountyarts.com.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Bluff Mountain 'a festival about community'; celebrates 26th year