Trending
BELMONT -- The hills of Belmont County will again echo with country music, as the Blame My Roots festival launches its second concert series at the Valley View Campgrounds on U.S. 40.
Chris Dutton and his family spearheaded the new country music festival to fill the void left when Jamboree In The Hills went on hiatus in 2018; the venue site was recently sold. Following the inaugural BMR event in 2019 the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the 2020 event, but Dutton said enthusiasm has remained high for 2021.
The lineup includes some major names in country music. Wednesday will feature local bands and the stage will be open to the public. Thursday is for regional performers. Friday and Saturday will be the main events.
"We're still shooting for the 6,000-8,000 range on Saturday," he said regarding anticipated attendance. "The response has been great, especially with the additions that we've added with our VIPs. We've been showing some renderings of what those seats are, what those box seats are going to look like.
"I think there's a lot of people anxious to see something different and see something new and have kind of a more intimate experience with that setting than what they're used to," he said.
The location is part of the draw, Dutton said. It is situated across from the former site of Jamboree In The Hills and once served as a major campground for that annual concert..
"It's a really beautiful farm. It's a staff that knows what they're doing. It's a great production, it's not something that's just thrown together last-minute. All those pieces of it jive really well. We heard over and over again it felt like the old Jamboree In The Hills days. I think that's kind of a feather in our cap," he said.
"We're bringing in a lot of new pieces. We learned a lot from 2019. The biggest thing is the stage is bigger, the production's bigger," he said. "We've had things in place for COVID, the masks and distancing went away and we didn't need to change as much as we thought. ... We can kind of go back to the original plans that we thought up for 2020, our layout."
Dutton said they are still learning some elements of putting on the concerts, and some aspects of the pandemic continue to take their toll.
"The hardest thing with a festival like this is you have one date to hit it. You have one date on the calendar all year," he said.
"There's a lot of difficulties. One of the hardest things that happened with COVID is staffing. Staffing's been the hardest and we've seen it with all of our suppliers, our contractors, all of the folks that are providing any sort of service for us. Everyone has staffing issues. ... They've got to drop stuff off early and we're not ready for it. We've got ourselves together and we've been out there three days getting stuff up early," he said.
"Even our beer inventory -- one of the beers we've been trying to get isn't available in the way that we wanted it to be, so we're just adjusting there," he said.
"It's supply chain stuff," he said. "It can't be last minute because we don't have the staffing. It's all that kind of stuff that we're running into with our normal subcontractors, our normal services, our normal vendors."
The festival will feature Miranda Lambert, Neal McCoy, Lee Brice, Jo Dee Messina, Tenille Townes, Adam Doleac, Niko Moon, Walker Montgomery, Allie Colleen and Luke Burkhardt.
"It's a lot of work," Dutton said. "The payoff is seeing the whole piece come together when those gates open."
Tents are already up at the campgrounds as preparations continue.
Dutton said they were starting early rather than trying to do all preparations at once.
"A lot of it's new. I think we're going to surprise a lot of people again. I think what you saw in 2019, we got a great response from it. I think people are really going to be shocked when they see it for 2021."
He commended all involved, particularly considering how small a team it is and how little they were in the same room together.
"We did a lot on Zoom," he said. "I think it's just amazing to pull it off. We're in July and masks have been gone through June, but this thing takes all year to plan, and we did a lot of this planning without being in the same room, and I think it's amazing what we've been able to pull off."