The iconic Camp Springs Labor Day Festival at Blue Grass Park is slated to return this weekend, August 30-September 1. Carlton Haney started North Carolina’s first multi-day bluegrass festival on this rural site in the northwestern part of the state near Reidsville in 1969. Haney’s event became a blueprint for others, especially after the movie, Bluegrass Country Soul, was filmed there in 1971. The park closed in the 1980s once Carlton stopped hosting festivals there, and it fell into disrepair.
Then in 2019, Cody and Donna Johnson bought the park and brought the festival back. Each year has offered something that links Camp Springs and its music back to the early days. For 2024, Lincoln Hensley, banjoist with the Tennessee Bluegrass Band, will be picking his Vega Sonny Osborne model banjo on Saturday at the festival.
“That’s what he played at Camp Springs in 1971,” Hensley noted.
Lincoln has a special connection with the late Sonny Osborne, ever since his banjo mentor, Edison Wallin, gave the banjo boy the Bluegrass Country Soul movie as a Christmas present one year.
Hensley says it was a turning point in his life.
“I was sitting in my parents’ living room on Christmas morning, listening to that DVD, and the Osborne Brothers’ part came on. They did Ruby, and Sonny had that six-string banjo tuned down with that low string. I didn’t know anything about that extra string, but they were plugged in and had the drums. I thought, ‘Holy cow, what is this?’ I was glued to that TV until their spot was over.”
Starstruck, he began investigating Sonny Osborne and his unique style of banjo picking, which eventually led to a close friendship that lasted until Sonny’s passing in 2021. Now, Hensley will be standing under the same I-beam where Osborne stood 53 years ago, picking the same model banjo.
“I think his was probably a 1968 model. Mine is a 1968. There was less than 20 total produced.”
“Earl Scruggs [who also played at Camp Springs in 1971] took the banjo to his level. Sonny came along and picked it up, learned everything that Earl did, then to it to his level,” stressed Hensley.
To kick off the festival, Bluegrass Country Soul will be played on a giant screen on the stage Thursday evening, August 30, at 8:30 pm. Camp Springs Labor Day weekend includes Appalachian Road Show, the Country Gentlemen Tribute Band, Caroline Owens, Tim Graves and the Farm Hands, and Drive Time on Friday. In addition to TBB on Friday, Authentic Unlimited, Danny Paisley, Backline, and Buttermilk Creek will perform. Sunday features a morning worship service followed by the King James Boys, Wood Family Tradition, Carley Arrowood, High Fidelity, and Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out.
Cody says, “We are excited again this year! We keep growing every year, thanks to the fans and the bands. It doesn’t seem like this is the sixth year!”
Camp Springs Bluegrass Park is located at 540 Boone Road in Elon, NC. For more information, visit them online, or contact Johnson by phone at (336) 213-1944.
