Kentuck Festival adds Speckled Bird to music lineup

Mark Hughes Cobb, The Tuscaloosa News
·2 min read

The Kentuck Festival of the Arts has had to make a change to its musical lineup, with Florence's Speckled Bird replacing Austin, Texas's Beat Root Revival.

The duo of Ben Jones and Andrea Magee was originally scheduled to close out the Brother Ben Stage, at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 16. When Jones had to travel back to England because of a family illness, the group's agent called to cancel, according to David Allgood, who is helping book the music, with Bo Hicks of Druid City Brewing Co., for the two-day arts festival.

Speckled Bird comprises songwriter and guitarist Adam Morrow, guitarist and engineer Jamie Sego, keyboardist and engineer Ben Tanner, bassist and engineer Parker McAnnally, and drummer Reed Watson. The band's first single, "Tonight," was released in May 2020 by Single Lock Records. Members of the group have played with Alabama Shakes, Belle Adair, John Paul White and Cedric Burnside, among others. White, half of the late Grammy-winning duo Civil Wars, will also play the Brother Ben Stage, at 1-2:15 Sunday, leading into the Speckled Bird set. To learn more, visit www.speckledbird.net.

Here's the lineup for the Brother Ben Stage:

SATURDAY, OCT. 15

9:30-10:30 a.m.: Hiroya Tsukamoto

11-noon: Doc Dailey

12:30-1:45 p.m.: Rollin' in the Hay

2:15-3:30: Wanda Band

3:45-5: Billy Allen and the Pollies

SUNDAY, OCT. 16

10-11 a.m. :-Sarah Lee Langford & Her Band

11:30-12:30 p.m.: Alicja-Pop

1-2:15: John Paul White

2:30-4: Speckled Bird

Here's the lineup for the Kathryn Tucker Windham Spoken Word Stage, featuring writers reading from their original works, a children's writing workshop, and readings of Windham's stories:

SATURDAY, OCT. 15

​9:30 a.m.: Writing our Stories, a kids’ workshop sponsored in part by Alabama Writers' Forum

11:30 a.m.: Marlin Barton

12:30 p.m.: University of Alabama undergraduate creative-writing students

1 p.m.: Pure Products readers, including Sara Pirkle, Eric Parker, Kaushika Suresh, Travis Turner, Jessica Smith, Brett Shaw and Sarah Cheshire

2 p.m.: Nana Nkweti

3 p.m.: Michael Martone

SUNDAY, OCT. 16

10 a.m.: The Rude Mechanicals reading works by Kathryn Tucker Windham

11 -- UA undergraduate writers

1:30 p.m.: Ashley M. Jones, Alabama poet laureate

2:30 p.m.: Mark Childress

The 51st annual Kentuck Festival of the Artists will be held 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 15, and 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Oct. 16 in Northport's Kentuck Park. Tickets are $10 per day, or $15 for both days. For more, see www.kentuck.org.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Kentuck Festival adds Speckled Bird to replace Beat Root Revival