Veteran bluegrass festival promoter and friend to everyone in the industry, Darrel Adkins, has died from complications of Alzheimers Disease. He was lost to us on September 16.
For 23 years, Darrel and his wife, Phyllis, put on the popular Musicians Against Childhood Cancer festival in Ohio as a benefit for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. Performers would agree to appear for a reduced fee in order to help the Adkinses raise funds in memory of their beloved daughter Mandy, who died in 2000 from a brain stem tumor, just shy of her 21st birthday.
Mandy had been treated at St. Judes, and the family was so taken by the kindness and professionalism of the doctors, nurses, and staff at the hospital, that they determined to do their part to help keep the facility going in its mission to provide the very best care to sick children, regardless of a family’s ability to pay.
Since 1984, Darrel and Phyllis had operated The Bluegrass Classic festival at Frontier Ranch in Pataskala, OH, just east of Columbus, moving it to the Hoover Y Park in Lockbourne, OH just two years earlier. So they took their many years of experience and switched from The Bluegrass Classic to the Musicians Against Childhood Cancer festival, starting in 2001 in the same location.
Over the years they raised and donated more than $1 million to St. Judes, while also managing one of the finest music events on the bluegrass summer calendar. Bands, music lovers, and vendors all loved being part of “The MACC,” as it was called. Noted for its orderliness, cleanliness, professionalism, and quality audio reinforcement, people travelled from all over the US and Canada to attend year after year.
Perhaps part of the reason the Adkins’ festivals were so artist-friendly was the fact that Darrel was a picker as well as a promoter. A self-taught banjo player, he performed in the upper midwest with his band as Darrel Adkins & Silver Wind. They released a record, Standing On A Bridge, with Old Homestead Records in 1990.
In 2012 Rural Rhythm Records released a two-CD album of music recorded at the MACC, along with one song, Life Goes On, written by Dale Pyatt and Steve Thomas, recorded in the studio by Larry Cordle, Jerry Salley, Carl Jackson, Rickey Wasson, Randy Kohrs, and Ronnie Bowman as the title cut. Like the festival itself, all proceeds from album sales went to St. Jude.
The Cardinal Center Campground in Marengo became home for The MACC in 2019. For the first time they had sufficient power for campers and RVs, plus quality water and sewer facilities, and gravel sites and roads in the campground.
A special component to most MACC festivals was the unique reunions and band configurations put together just for the MACC stage. Darrel even convinced the great Earl Scruggs to come and play one year, where he found a tremendously supportive and enthusiastic audience.
The 2022 festival was the final hurrah for Musicians Against Childhood Cancer. The Adkinses said at the time that there were several factors leading to their decision to call it quits, but largely it was new management at the campground and a change in how they host outside events.
In Darrel, bluegrass music had an indefatigable champion, and someone who counted nearly all of the music’s top entertainers among his friends. Following his death, the entire community is in mourning.
Funeral arrangements are being made today, and we will update with those as soon as we have them.
R.I.P., Darrel Adkins.
