Virginia’s Blue Ridge Music Center and The Bluffs Restaurant in Laurel Springs, NC, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, are pleased to present the inaugural Fiddle & Fork Festival June 12-14.
Through they are in adjoining states, these two venues are quite near each other on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Music Center offers traditional mountain music entertainment during the warm seasons of the year near Galax, VA, while The Bluffs operates as the first restaurant on the Parkway. It originally opened in 1949 and served Parkway visitors until it closed in 2010. The Parkway Foundation raised the necessary funds to reopen it in 2021, where visitors can taste traditional Southern cooking, and learn about Southern Appalachian heritage foodways.
Between the two venues, the Fiddle & Fork Festival will offer three days of fine food, music, and Appalachian culture with concerts, dinners, and special events dedicated to topics like storytelling, beekeeping, seed saving, chair caning, and other traditional Appalachian crafts.
Music will come from The Steep Canyon Rangers, along with Fisher Peak Timber Rattlers, Buck Mountaineers, Dot and Dan Shikenjanski, Willard Gayheart and Scott Freeman, Sugarloaf Mountain Band, Blue Ridge Ramblers, and Gen 3.
The festival includes a mix of free and ticketed events, all celebrating the 25th season of music at the Blue Ridge Music Center.
Full details can be found online.
