One of the “coolest cats” to ever pick up a banjo will entertain the crowd at the award-winning Carolina Bible Camp Bluegrass Festival on Saturday, Sept. 13, in Mocksville, North Carolina.
Sammy Shelor, winner of the 2011 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, will headline the festival with his popular group, the Lonesome River Band.
Tickets to Davie County’s Carolina Bible Camp Bluegrass Festival are available online now at www.cbcbluegrass.com. Ticket platform Zeffy makes the process easy.
The Sept. 13 schedule of bluegrass’s finest also includes:
– PBS Song of the Mountains host Tim White & Troublesome Hollow
The Southeast Tourism Society (STS) has named the North Carolina Folk Festival as one of its Signature Events of the Southeast for 2025, recognizing it among the region’s top annual festivals. Travel industry experts select these top events each year, shining a spotlight on the people and experiences that make them special.
“Being named a Signature Event of the Southeast is an incredible honor, but it’s only the start,” said Jodee Ruppel, NC Folk Festival executive director, in a release. “This recognition inspires our commitment to keep growing with more amazing artists, diverse traditions, and bringing new audiences to Greensboro to experience the vibe of our festival and our city.”
The 2025 NC Folk Festival will fill downtown Greensboro with the sounds of global music Sept. 12–14. This year’s headliners include Sammy Rae & The Friends (Friday), Arrested Development (Saturday) and Steep Canyon Rangers (Sunday).
The three-day festival, now in its 11th year, began as the National Folk Festival before transitioning into its North Carolina version. It draws more than 100,000 visitors to downtown Greensboro annually.
“Being named a Signature Event of the Southeast is a tremendous honor that speaks volumes about the North Carolina Folk Festival’s impact—not just in our community, but across the region,” said Melvin “Skip” Alston, chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, in a release. “Guilford County has long been a destination for arts, culture, and community, and we couldn’t be prouder of the Folk Festival in achieving this national recognition. The festival is a celebration of the rich diversity that makes our community special, and this accolade reinforces what we’ve always known—it’s one of the best events in the South.
“It’s wonderful to see the N.C. Folk Festival recognized as a Signature Event of the Southeast. This honor reflects the talent, diversity and community spirit the festival brings to Greensboro every year, and it’s exciting to see something that started here getting regional recognition,” says Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan.
For more than 40 years, STS has celebrated the Southeast’s premier festivals, honoring the dedication of event organizers while providing additional exposure. Events considered for the STS Signature Events of the Southeast recognition must be at least three years old and attract a minimum of 1,000 attendees.
The 2nd Annual Next Door Music Festival brings a mix of live music, food and community from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 16, to downtown Oxford, North Carolina.
Hosted by Next Door Radio, this nonprofit FREE event at 105 W. Spring St. donates 100 percent of proceeds to Family Living Violence Free (FLVF), supporting survivors of domestic violence. The lineup spans punk, emo, indie dream pop, Americana and atmospheric rock, featuring North Carolina bands Late Bloomer, Blab School, Entrez Vous, The Yardarm and Long Relief. Headliner Noise Beneath the Floor brings a national presence from Columbus, Ohio, and Athens, Georgia.
The festival will also feature eight food trucks, 75 local vendors and a farmers market. After the main event, head to Tobacco Wood Brewing Co. for the After Party from 6–9 p.m.), featuring three more NC bands, brews, and food. This community-rooted event draws visitors from across the region for a full day of music and connection.
Fans of Yarn and RoosterWalk Music and Arts Festival will be excited to hear that the 5th rendition of the band’s annual alternative music festival is moving to Pop’s Farm just outside Martinsville, Virginia, on Oct. 16-18, 2025.
Tickets are on sale now at this link and start $110. The event’s address is 675 Hobson Road, Axton, Virginia.
Band leader and founder Blake Christiana says, “We are moving Yarnival 5 to Pop’s Farm in an effort to make it just a little bit bigger and hopefully even better. Big huge thanks and love to Jay and Constance Wyant for allowing us to grow this event at Alder Creek Farm for its first four years.
“In sticking with our small festival appeal where every ticket is a VIP, we will be limiting the number of tickets we sell and continue the laidback vibe that has made our past Yarnival’s so welcoming, friendly and comfortable. WE DO EXPECT A SELL OUT, SO GET YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE.
“We will continue to feature whatever kind of music we feel like alongside our feature of alternative forms of entertainment, i.e. magic, carnival arts, circus performers, burlesque, etc… You won’t be seeing any super ‘big names’ at our festival but you will be seeing talent that is equal to or even greater than said ‘big names.’ Most likely some will even go on to become ‘big names.’ The difference between a band that draws a hundred people every night and 10,000 people every night is a tiny speck of dust. Albeit magic dust, but just a little dust nonetheless.”
More about Yarn
Blake Christiana, founding member of Yarn, has the music in him. In fact, you could say that Blake is the music and the music is Blake; that’s how deeply he inhabits the songs he writes and plays. You can hear him struggling with his feelings, whether it’s on a skittering country shuffle or on a mid-tempo folk ballad or a straight-ahead rocker. His restless search for the chords and lyrics over the past 20 years has produced a plethora of memorable music, and since 2007 he’s led Yarn, a band that’s evolved from its earliest days as a bar band in New York City to an outstanding roots band that’s shared stages with Dwight Yoakam, Marty Stuart, Alison Krauss, and Leftover Salmon, among many others.
Yarn got their start by playing a weekly residency at Kenny’s Castaways in Greenwich Village in 2007. “We played there every Monday night for two years. I was writing like crazy, and we’d try out the songs. It was like rehearsing on stage; every night was different, and sometimes we played in front of five people and sometimes there’d be 100 people there.” Over the years, musicians have rotated in and out of Yarn, but drummer Robert Bonhomme and bassist Rick Bugel, along with Christiana, have remained the core of the band.
17 years and over 10 albums later, Yarn has a new album, “Born, Blessed, Grateful & Alive,” out in July 2024, and their exuberance shines as bright as ever; they lay down jubilant songs—even when the lyrics might be a little less than joyous—and play effortlessly across a number of genres. Joining Christiana, Bonhomme, and Bugel in the studio for this he album were guitarists Mike Robinson (Railroad Earth), Andy Falco (Infamous Stringdusters), and Mike Sivilli (Dangermuffin), bassist Johnny Grubb (Railroad Earth), harmony vocalists Heather Hannah and Elliott Peck (Midnight North), and keyboardist Damian Calcagne, who co-produced the album along side Blake Christiana.
The soaring Allman Brothers-esque mid-tempo rocker “Turn Off the News” opens with a cascading piano run that tumbles into the band’s echoing vocals that reverberate with a gospel-inflected acclimation of the joy we feel when we can “turn of the news” and “shake off the blues” of the incessant 24 hour depressing news cycle. The country shuffle “Somethings Gotta Change” strolls along the crystalline riffs of a pedal steel that darts in and out of a honky-tonk piano; the song exudes a joyous spirit even in the face of the world falling down around it.
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