Here’s another debut festival launching this year. It’s wonderful to see new events springing up again following the end of the pandemic shutdowns.
Headin’ Home Bluegrass, i.e., the Lindblom family of coastal Georgia, will be hosting the Headin’ Home Fest this fall at the Ohoopee River Campground in Lyons, GA. It will run for four days, November 10-13, with music and fun for the whole family promised in a wooded setting along the river. When temperatures start dropping up north, it will be plenty warm in Georgia to get one last fix of bluegrass outdoors before winter sets in and the holiday season begins.
The Lindbloms will perform, along with The Little Roy & Lizzy Show, Edgar Loudermilk Band, Retro 78, Backline, and many others. The facility has a permanent stage, with plenty of full-service RV hookups and rough camping sites, plus a variety of activities for the family including, kayak and canoe renting, fishing, biking, volleyball, horseshoe, a playground, food and drink concessions, and lovely walking trails. Jamming will also be actively encouraged.
The story of the Lindblom family and Headin’ Home Bluegrass doesn’t track precisely like the typical family bluegrass band. Marina and Jon Lindblom both graduated with performance degrees from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and moved to Savannah in 1992 to take jobs with The Savannah Symphony. Jon plays trumpet and Marina violin.
As their family grew to nine children, each in turn was taught piano and violin, and they began to play and sing together at community events. Then a chance occurrence shifted the family’s musical direction towards bluegrass.
As they describe it…
“In October 2016, while taking a vacation to the mountains of North Carolina, the Lindblom family’s music was forever changed! We stepped into a little gift shop between Maggie Valley and Cherokee. Bluegrass music was playing through the store’s speakers. The sound just gripped us—we loved it! We bought an instrumental CD to take home: Sunday Morning Bluegrass by Mike Scott. In the weeks and months that followed, we just wore that CD out, playing and replaying it constantly! We all knew it together: we’re starting a bluegrass band! Dad switched out his trumpet for the upright bass, Mom tossed aside her sheet music and transformed her classical violin into a fiddle (although she still insists on cleaning off the rosin dust every day!), and the oldest four children each picked their favorite bluegrass instrument. With eleven family members, we couldn’t all be in one band (we don’t like chaos, as you’ve probably guessed) so the younger five started their own band: The Brothers Five! And the rest is history!”
And they’ve become quite adept in their pursuit, as you can see in this performance of one of their original songs, The Last Adam.
In addition to mom and dad, Headin’ Home includes Luke (23) on reso-guitar, Libby (21) on guitar, Lucy (19) on mandolin, and Timothy (17) on banjo.
You can learn more about Headin’ Home Bluegrass online, and about the Headin’ Home Fest at the festival web site.
