View gallery
Kevin Griffin is “cool as a cucumber” when speaking with HollywoodLife. At the time, it was lower than three weeks away from the 2022 version of the Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival (happening tomorrow, Sept. 24 and 25, on the Harlinsdale Farm in Franklin, Tennessee.) This 12 months’s version of the long-running pageant featured Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, The Avett Brothers, Elle King, Jon Batiste, and a stacked lineup, however the Better Than Ezra frontman – and pageant co-founder – wasn’t sweating the small print. “Honestly, it’s like summer camp. Everybody starts coming in over the next week, and when it winds down, and we’re doing the postmortem, taking things down and cleaning up the park, it’s that ‘sad end of camp’ kind of vibe.”
“Me and my partners, W. Brandt Wood and Michael Whelan, were fortunate to grow up going to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival,” shares Griffin. “And what Jazz Fest is, it’s a celebration of the best music, food, culture, artisans, and merchants of the Gulf south — New Orleans has been spreading out — and man, you’ve got indie hipsters and scenesters with kids and families – and there’s a big foundation, he Jazz & Heritage Foundation, that supports music programs and different charitable organizations in the city — all those things. I grew up thinking, ‘Hey, all festivals are like this.’ It’s family-friendly. It’s cool.”
“And, and engaging musically and family-friendly are not mutually exclusive. They can exist together, and cause I’ve seen, I grew up with it,” he provides. Such is the case with the Lil’ Pilgrims Family Stage And Mare Barn Theatre, one of many 5 phases on the Pilgrimage Music Festival. Families can take within the sights and the sounds of the pageant all through the day, and be again in time to see Jon Batiste and Brandi Carlile shut out Saturday on the Gold Record Road and Midnight Sun phases.
Pilgrimage affords its personal distinctive expertise. When Kevin relocated to Franklin, Tennessee, in 2013, he wished to convey that “Jazz Fest feeling” to his new residence. “Even in 2013, there was already Bonnaroo; there were already a ton of festivals. But I was like, this higher-end, smaller festival experience, there’s really a lane for it. Maybe you went to Bonnaroo, partied in your tent, and now you’ve got a family. Or, you’d like some good food, but you still think, ‘Man, I still dig some cool music.’ It’s really cool what we get to do here in the city. It just clicks.”
Helping this 12 months “click” is a concentrate on Americana music. “If you look at our past lineups,” says Kevin, “it kind of changes. We’ve had some years that have leaned Americana country, like this year. We’ve had some years that have leaned more pop, like Justin Timberlake and Walk The Moon. And then, more rock like Foo Fighters and The Killers. And we just kind of feel what we’re into that year, and what feels like that year.”
Sometimes, “the lineups just fall together,” says Griffin. “Sometimes, it’s by accident, and sometimes, it’s by design. This year, we locked in Chris Stapleton and Brandi, it kind of set the tone. And we’ve always wanted to get Jon Batiste – and we may be one of his few public performances this year. He’s not doing any festivals because he’s dealing with his wife’s ill health. So we’re very grateful to be having him. But, this is a very specific land we’re going for this year, and it feels like we’ve chosen right.”
However, what actually makes the Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival stand out among the many relaxation is the concentrate on the latter half of the title: the tradition. Griffin tells HollywoodLife that’s not just a few “lip service” or branding, however that the pageant celebrates the influence the world has had on fashionable music. “We have this huge tent called the American Music Triangle tent. And the ‘music triangle’ is the triangle that surrounds the Mississippi Delta. If you do a triangle from New Orleans up to Memphis over to Nashville and back down to New Orleans, that region – from Louisiana to Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee – is arguably where not only American music (rock, blues jazz) has come from, but it’s infiltrated the whole world.”
“So we have this tent where municipalities from all in the triangle — Greenville Cleveland, Tupelo, Muscles Shoals, New Orleans, Memphis — at even San Antonio with Tejano music, they all have booths there. And we have Mike Wolfe from American Pickers curating the room with all these antiques from his private warehouse. When you go into this tent, it’s like stepping back in time. You have people speaking about music genres on stage, and then you have an artist exhibiting that. We really bolstered the cultural part this year.”
“We have the Black Opry, which has just been this amazing force and organization for black artists in the Americana and country space,” he says. “And then on Sunday, we have a Southern gospel service just to kick off the day. It’s a non-denominational just celebration of gospel music.”
And so I feel this 12 months already, I’m simply enthusiastic about it. I do know I’ll look again with admiration for making the cultural a part of the pageant this deep dive into music and tradition and historical past. To be capable to convey that to folks after which to get to see what’s in their very own yard and take satisfaction in it? And fostering it to a brand new technology is de facto, actually cool. I dig that half, and I can not take accountability for it — it’s one among my companions, Brant Wood, who spearheads the cultural half. And it’s actually cool.”
“We’ve been unabashed in our tipping a hat back to Jazz Fest in New Orleans,” concludes Griffin. “They do it so well — the cultural part, that DNA is about their festival. And, and we brought that to middle Tennessee in our own unique way.”
Click right here for extra details about the Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival.
Discussion about this post