Don Rigsby with Southern Legacy at the 2025 Jekyll Island Bluegrass Festival – photo © Bill Warren
This year’s Jekyll Island Bluegrass Festival was one for the books. It is not often that this old picture-taker is blown away by festival activities, but this weekend I was! That will be the second part of the story.
The first part of the story was the awesome music.
Friday kicked off with Retro 78, who included new member. Festival promoter, Ernie Evans, has picked up his guitar and joined forces with Clint Groves and the guys. Ernie has not played as part of a band in several years. Welcome back, Ernie!
The Kody Norris Show puts everyone on the edge of their seats with their high energy show. This award winning group must be seen live to be fully appreciated.
The Country Gentlemen Show was featured both Friday and Saturday. More about them in part two.
Rhonda Vincent & the Rage gave us two great sets of music, and closed out Friday night. She spotlighted Chris Sexton of Nothin’ Fancy, who had bought a viola from one of the festival vendors. He played in a trio with Adam Haynes and Rhonda, and then he and Rhonda played an improvised version of the Mule Skinner Blues. Just Wow!
Penny Creek, opened the Saturday show. They are a Florida band that have become a staple at Jekyll. They are Fritz Kraemer on mandolin, Susan Pounds on bass, Chris Paganoni on guitar, and John Apfelthaler on banjo. They play weekly in the Melbourne, Florida area.
Southern Legacy is a new band with some of the most seasoned musicians in bluegrass. We see them at many of the EMS festivals. This a group of super-pickers that everyone needs to see. They are working on their own album
Darin & Brooke Aldridge brought their unique sound to Jekyll this year. Brooke is one of the strongest female vocalists in all of music. The band has a new young fiddle player, Marissa Colter, a talented youngster.
The Malpass Brothers presented two sets of top notch traditional country music to close out the festival.
Now on to the second part of the story…
Ernie and Debi have undertaken a project to honor pioneering bluegrass music acts. The first year was Doyle Lawson, who performed his final show with Quicksilver at the festival. Last year the Osborne Brothers were honored with Bobby accepting the honor.
This year the honorees were the Country Gentlemen. Darren Beachley was Ernie’s go-to guy in getting this whole thing set up. He worked very hard to contact Gents alumni and families and get them to the show.
The four members of the early Gentlemen were awarded the Norman Adams League of Innovators award. Tom Gray was on hand to accept his, and on behalf of Eddie Adcock. Eddie’s health did not allow him to be present. However, Ernie got him on the phone and he and Tom told a couple stories. Tom told about John Duffey parking the band limo with a sleeping Charlie Waller in a junkyard next to the hotel they were staying in. You’ll have to ask Tom about the end of that story!!
Sachiko and Mina Waller accepted the award in Charlie’s behalf.
John Duffey’s son-in-law, Kent Dowell, accepted on his behalf.
There was a Country Gentlemen reunion performance as well on Saturday. The Country Gentlemen Show welcomed alumni Tom Gray, Darin Aldridge, Billy Gee, Rick Allred, Kent Dowell, Ronnie Davis, Billy Lee Cox, and Calvin Corbett (Greg’s son).
All of them gathered by the Gents banner along with Sachiko and Mina and the Gents Show guys. They autographed the banner and had pictures taken with it.
This was an experience of a lifetime for me. I can only hope that the pictures do it justice.
MC Sherry Boyd interviewed Tom Gray on stage. That video is on Ernie’s Facebook page.
He plans on honoring the Stanley Brothers at the 2026 Jekyll Island festival, January 1-3.
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