Coming in June – Groverfest

Charlotte is a bit of a dead-zone when it comes to music festivals. There are a few festivals held uptown every spring and summer, but the music is usually paired with food exhibitions and the bands are often cover-bands or “safe” national touring acts. Unfortunately, there’s not much love for local and regional bands at the festivals held uptown. Maybe the promoters want to play it safe and/or assume that the festival goers aren’t musically adventurous…

But in 2007 a group of enterprising musicians from the Mooresville area took it upon themselves to put a bona fide music festival together — Groverfest — a festival that focuses on local and regional artists… both well-known acts and up-and-comers.

As I said in my last blog post, a good music festival gives festival goers and chance to get away from day-to-day routine, to get into nature, and to share in the experience of music. The Groverfest family of musicians takes this in stride by offering on-site camping at the Millstone farm in Davidson and by having concerts running on outdoor stages throughout the day and on an expansive stage in a rustic barn at night (with full light-show!).

This year, they are teaming up with The Carolina Live Music Society to pull together what looks to be a great festival from June 4-6. This year’s line-up is already quite impressive:

The New Familiars, Incognito Mosquito, Jackson Crossing (with Rick Willis of Marshall Tucker Band fame), The Mantras, Chasing Edison, Duk Tan, Matter of Fact, Walrus and the Carpenter, From A Seed, Near Gravity and many more.

The Groverfest group is doing something truly little “d” democratic in that they are creating their own festival in lieu of Charlotte’s barren festival landscape. It’s easy to sit around and criticize Charlotte for being lame when it comes to cultivating original music but it’s not as easy to organize your own festival by way of improving it.

As with any grass-roots campaign for change, it requires a vision and a group of people that want to make that vision a reality. It also requires support. Check out www.Groverfest.com or www.Carolinalivemusic.net for details on weekend passes, full artist line-up, camping, volunteering, and just about every other detail you can think of.

This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2010.