Graves Mountain Music Festival – in the Blue Ridge

Graves Mountain Festival of Music – in the Blue Ridge, returns for its 27th year with a three day line-up of Bluegrass new finds, up and coming, and long-time festival favorites. The dates are the three days May 30, Thurs, May 31, Friday, and June 1, Saturday, with performances running from late morning through to 10:30 PM, when festival goers pull out their own fiddles and banjos back at their RVs.

The festival area – the Graves Family Farm – the meadows, the camping, the walnut trees, the stream, horses, cattle, goats – all framed by the Blue Ridge Mountains just there at the edge of the camping fields. The stage is serenaded by the Rose River and the sixteen hundred returning campers clapping and whistling for their favorite fiddlers.

The campers and day visitors know that the stream is waiting for a dunk or a fishing rod. They know that they can count on the same “old style” Southern cooks, Margaret, Margie, Gail doing all the meals family style up in the main lodge farmhouse restaurant, while down by the stage there is the usual festival food and drink plus the bonus of special menus by Gail working the grill – Graves fried chicken, mountain trout, ribeye steak plus all the sides that will teeter on the plate.

The talent line-up is twenty-one bands and singer songwriters. The groups’ tour buses are thick on the ground in this tiny hamlet, a ninety minute drive from Washington DC, an hour from Fredericksburg, two hours from Richmond, three and a half hours from Newport News, and four hours from Winston-Salem.