West Virginia has a long, rich history of music festivals. Most notably the Vandalia Gathering, The Augusta Heritage Festival and the Appalachian String Band Festival. Those three are centered around Appalachian traditions, music being a primary, but not necessarily only, focus. The Music in the Mountains Bluegrass Festival serves up, as its name implies, straight ahead bluegrass.
While there are also additional, more community-based festivals scattered throughout the state, there seems to be an absence of what we know as an eclectic, Americana-themed one. That is about to change when the Lewisburg Music Festival begins a one-day event on the lawn of Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg, West Virginia on Saturday July 26 featuring some very familiar names on the festival circuit.
The festival is an extension of Carnegie Hall’s annual music series that features many Americana artists. But it was not always that way. The Hall was built in 1902 by Andrew Carnegie as a classroom building for the Lewisburg Female Institute, later the Greenbrier College for Women and is one of only four such halls that Carnegie built that remain. The most famous one is, of course, the one in New York. In 1983 it was incorporated as a regional not-for-profit arts and education center, including art exhibits, dance performances and film. 
While I first became acquainted with Carnegie Hall in 1990 when I was the Director of the West Virginia International Film Festival we would tour the state with screenings of films made by state filmmakers with the Hall being one of our stops, it has since 1902 presented music performances, classical, jazz, bluegrass and what we now call Americana. Past performers is a virtual who’s who of Americana: Doc Watson, Gilliam Welch, David Rawlings, Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck, Ricky Skaggs, Taj Mahal and Arlo Guthrie, as well as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Wynton Marsalis and Issac Stern.
Carnegie Hall’s hometown of Lewisburg (population 3,830 and two downtown traffic lights) was also named, in 2011, as the “coolest small town” in the country, in part due to its thriving artistic community. Part of that tradition also included another festival, the annual Jazz and Blues Festival that the Hall also sponsored.
With this very abbreviated history, the Hall wanted to host another festival in the area that draws from contemporary Americana music. The line-up includes Keller Williams, Yarn, The Steel Wheels, Nora Jane Struthers and the Party Line, Mandolin Orange and the Wild Rumpus. Like its summer music series, the Ivy Terrace Concerts that features primarily local performers, it will be on the beautiful lawn of Carnegie Hall, just a few blocks from the heart of downtown.
While most festivals are multi-day events, few are held in the downtown portion of a town, even a small one. While there is no on site camping (and all that entails), there are plenty of nearby accommodations and very nice restaurants. So you do not need to rough it in order to hear some great music. And at anytime or during a break in the music, you can take a stroll through town and be back long before the next set is over. However, there is a state forest nearby for those who want that expeience.
When I first heard about the festival, the only downside was that it is being held right in the middle of another favorite fest, Floydfest. However that was tempered when it was also announced that Donna the Buffalo would be playing the evening before the Lewisburg Festival and there would be a special edition of Mountain Stage the day after, both in my hometown. So, I will not be visiting Floyd, Virginia this year.
For more information on the Festival, Carnegie Hall, the town and it has to offer, visit:
(Photographs and graphics courtesy of Carnegie Hall, the City of Lewisburg, the artists and Amos Perrine.)
