John Lockaby to Clear Mountain View Music Festival

cmvmfJohn Lockaby, who recently resigned his position as partner in Deep River Management, a bluegrass-centered agency representing up-and-coming artists, has now resigned his post at National Bluegrass to become Operational Manager for the existing Clear Mountain View Music Festival and the new Five String Fest, David Elliott of Elliott Family Farms in Polkville, North Carolina, has recently announced.

Lockaby has been in the bluegrass business for over 20 years. He offers this as an explanation of the recent chain of events …..

John Lockaby“David Elliott approached me through email about helping him with the Clear Mountain View Festival, his desire was to have a little more bluegrass in his line-up. I asked him then, how he came about choosing me to give him input and he said that I was recommended on the Banjo Hangout, and that I seemed to know the bluegrass industry quite well. He also said he approached a few people, but none took him serious. After he called, I made the trip up to Shelby, North Carolina, to meet him, and fell in love with the farm.

I did give him some bands to book for the festival (Steep Canyon Rangers, Town Mountain, Darin & Brooke [Aldridge], and the Steel Wheels), and he booked those bands to give the Clear Mountain View Festival some bluegrass in the line-up.

It was also on that day that I told him that we should have a Five String Fest to honor the banjo players that are from this area, and to have just bands that have a banjo in the band. He thought it was a great idea, and we pushed forward with the festival.

At first we were just going to manage it under my management agency, Deep River Management. Me and my business partner, Laura Ridge, agreed that it was becoming too much to book our bands and manage a festival of this magnitude. So she took over Deep River and the Elliotts took me on as Operational Manager for their festivals.”

So much for the recent past; Lockaby goes on to say …………..

“David will continue to book bands for the Clear Mountain View Fest, and I will help with all of the other operations for that festival, but I will be booking the bands as well as handling all operations for the Five String Fest.

I have always loved the banjo, and it will be a great festival having all of the best banjo players in one place. Of course, we will have mostly bluegrass artists, but we are not going to limit ourselves to that. The banjo has crossed over to a lot of genres, and we feel like this is what some of the great banjo players from this area would have wanted. Earl himself was very progressive for his time and he even crossed genres as well.”

The 2nd Annual Clear Mountain View Music Festival takes place over four days from  August 22nd through to the 25th. For details on tickets and the full talent line-up, visit the Clear Mountain View website.

The Steep Canyon Rangers will announce the headline bands for the Five String Fest during the Clear Mountain View Music Festival.

Share this:

About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.