The annual Steve Sutton Fest, held in honor of the popular western North Carolina banjo player who passed away unexpectedly on May 15, 2017 at the age of 61, has a new location this year, returning this one day celebration of the music he loved back to Steve’s home county of Haywood.
The festival started out as a Memorial Concert for Steve in 2017, held again the next year, which for the third running was renamed as the Steve Sutton Fest. His good friend, Darren Nicholson, was instrumental in launching the Memorial Concerts and the festival. While he was alive, Steve was a part of the Darren Nicholson Band, which played less regularly while Darren was part of Balsam Range, but would surely be a part of the group now had he lived.
At his passing, Darren shared that Sutton a mentor before he was a friend.
““Steve got me my first mandolin when I was a kid. I had an inexpensive student instrument and he saw some promise in me, and took me down to the music store and paid $3,500 in cash for me to have a Gibson mandolin. He also got me my first professional job in music with Alecia Nugent.”
He also explained a bit about why Steve was so well loved throughout the bluegrass community.
“He was just a barrel of laughs. We always had fun touring together, and we were always laughing. He had a beautiful spirit, and a beautiful mind… and he was absolutely hilarious.”
The new location for Steve Sutton Fest is the Lake Junaluska Conference Center, sited along beautiful Lake Junaluska in western North Carolina, just west of Asheville.
The festival is run by a 501(c)(3) charitable trust, and all proceeds are funneled back into the community, something that was very important in Sutton’s life, helping others through music.
Darren tells us that everything raised at Sutton Fest is redistributed for the benefit of bluegrass music.
“Currently the Steve Sutton Memorial Foundation benefits three different entities: Haywood County Schools, in the form of scholarships for college students; the IBMA trust fund, which is so wonderful about helping musicians in need; and our J..AM. (Junior Appalachian Musician) programs, which are huge in the development and education for area youth interested in our kind of music.”
The 2024 event raised $7,500, which went back out as follows:
- $3,000 to Haywood County Schools Foundation for music scholarships
- $3,000 to the IBMA Trust Fund
- $1,500 to area Junior Appalachian Musicians programs
Nicholson also tells us that they have high hopes of expanding to two days in 2026. Wonderful news all around.
Steve Sutton Fest 2025 will be held on Sunday, June 8, from 2:00-6:00 p.m., with performances from No Joke Jimmy’s, Whitewater Bluegrass CO., Mike Compton & Laura Boosinger, Junior Appalachian Musicians, and the Mountain Tradition Cloggers.
Tickets are $25, and children 12 and under are admitted free of charge. They can be purchased in advance online.
