The Earl Scruggs Music Festival, a Labor Day weekend tribute to the pioneering bluegrass banjo player, debuted in 2022 after being canceled twice during the coronavirus pandemic. The festival, which the International Bluegrass Music Association named the Event of the Year in 2025, has become one of the state’s top bluegrass/Americana music festivals. It presents about 30 acts Friday through Sunday, many of whom have direct connections to or were influenced by Scruggs, including in its inaugural edition for example, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bela Fleck, Molly Tuttle, Alison Brown, Dom Flemons and Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley. Acts typically play 90-minute sets.
We attended the festival's 2022 debut and in 2023, 2024 and 2026.
The Del McCoury Band was well-received on the Earl Scruggs Music Festival's Flint Hill Stage in 2026.
Sam Bush (second from left below) and Dominick Leslie (fifth from left) join Bela Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart for the festival in 2022.
Jerry Douglas serves as festival host, and plays with his Earls of Leicester, the Jerry Douglas Band and with several other acts during the weekend. Below, he plays solo on the main Flint Hill Stage in 2022.
The festival is staged at the incredible Tryon International Equestrian Center & Resort in the Mill Spring community of Polk County, near where Scruggs was born and grew up. In addition to the resort, its primary sponsors are the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby and Isothermal Community College and its WNCW radio station in Rutherfordton.
The Tryon Center, which also hosted the Night in the Country Carolinas Music Festival in 2021 and 2022, is as much a part of the festival as the bands. The festival itself occupies a small portion of the 1,600-acre complex, which is home to three 3,000-seat equestrian arenas (including one indoors below), four additional show rings, seven barns and 1,400 stalls, as well as eight restaurants and bars and several shops. The resort also offer more than 60 cabins (see more below), a 50-room inn, a 200-site RV park and tent camping onsite during the festival. For 2026, the resort opened the Overmountain Lodge & Conference Center, an upscale hotel. Onsite lodging quickly sells out each year.
The festival's two main performance stages and a smaller stage for performances, workshops and interviews have been grouped around the central Legends Club building (below), and the Legends Plaza connecting them stays busy but never seems overcrowded. The facility has plenty of space to add more stages as the festival grows — its brochure boasts “14 fully-engineered arenas.”
The screened porch at the Legends Clubhouse below is part of the Legends Grille (and bar). A sushi restaurant occupies the other wing of the building.
The Flint Hill Stage, seen below during the 2026 festival, is in the resort’s International Stadium, which features a 3,000-seat covered grandstand. (More stage area photos below.)
In 2026, the new Louise Scruggs Stage, named for Earl's wife, was set up in the 3,500-seat Tryon Stadium directly behind the Legends Club building. (More stage area photos below.)
The Foggy Mountain Stage in a gazebo on Legends Plaza hosts performances, workshops and artist interviews. In 2026, small two-row metal bleachers were set out instead of folding chairs. (More stage area photos below.)
In addition to two restaurants and a bar at the Legends Club and a general store that sells all kinds of snacks, ice cream and pastries (and resort souvenirs) while also housing a Starbucks, there's also a diner (below), an Italian restaurant and a "bowls" stand adjacent to the plaza. Further, the Silver Spoon Saloon, which also has an arcade and game center, is adjacent to the Louise Scruggs Stage area and Gertie Mae's, an upscale Southern comfort and fusion restaurant, is located inside the Overmountain Lodge, the resort's motel. We have been pleased with each meal or snack we've had from several of the resort's restaurants.
Roger's Diner is next to the Foggy Mountain Stage, which makes tables on its patio popular during performances.
Across the plaza from the Foggy Mountain Stage gazebo, a carousel offers free rides.
A promenade lined with shops on the far side of Tryon Stadium leads to the Silo Bar. Most shops carry equestrian-related goods.
A gazebo on the promenade welcomes pickers and music fans.
Several vendors lined the plaza between the festival entrance and the Legends clubhouse and restaurants. Several food vendors occupied a parking lot behind the general store (see the map below).
Just off of the plaza, the Earl Scruggs Center occupied a kiosk alongside of a tent with festival merchandise.
The grandstand at the International Stadium has 3,000 seats, which are padded but somewhat cramped. Tickets were available for admission to the stadium floor, or for a bit more money, the floor and grandstand, which included access to indoor and air conditioned restrooms. The floor of the arena is a mixture of sand and cotton, which makes it less sandy and slippery and kick up less as horses run on it. On Sunday in 2022, which was rainy, festival organizers opened the grandstand to all ticketholders. Those who paid for VIP admission had access to tables and chairs on the balcony at the top of the grandstand, which included a buffet and seating indoors, as well as a sequestered area down front at stage-right on the arena floor.
Festival organizers have repeatedly reconfigured the stadium floor setup, including less use of the picnic tables with umbrellas. Mostly it has been a version of what's shown in the video below from Sunday of 2023, as Emmylou Harris introduces a song.
The Flint Hill Stage is in the International Stadium, to the left on the map below. The grandstand is adjacent to the three-story International Pavilion, which houses event space that was open for VIP ticketholders' buffet and bar, as well as a gym and rec center. The Foggy Mountain Stage gazebo, which we discuss further below, is depicted near the center of Legends Plaza and to the left of Roger's Diner. The Louise Scruggs Stage is in Tryon Stadium, at center.
The Louise Scruggs Stage makes use of only a small portion of Tryon Stadium in its debut configuration. The Silver Spoon Saloon is on the concourse directly behind the seats facing the stage.
Our older photos from the Foggy Mountain Stage show the plastic chairs set out in front of the stage. These were replaced by bleachers in 2026. People could bring their own camp chairs, too.
Above and below, Darin and Brooke Aldridge play a Sunday gospel brunch on the Foggy Mountain Stage.
The Foggy Mountain Stage area gets most crowded during special shows presented on Saturday afternoon, such as when Fireside Collective hosted several other bands in 2022 to recreate the Earl Scruggs Revue's 1972 "Live at Kansas State" album. In 2023, Tony Trischka and his band hosted a rendition of the Earl Scruggs Revue's "Live! from Austin City Limits" album, which was released in 1977.
The smaller Foggy Mountain Stage offers the easiest opportunity to see musicians close up, such as below, a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration with Tony Trischka (left), Tray Wellington, Jerry Douglas and Michael Cleveland.
The one-bedroom cabins are very small but are only a 10-minute walk from the festival entrance. There is also a free shuttle.
Cabins have a stove, microwave and refrigerator, and are air conditioned.
The one-bedroom cabins have pull-out sofa beds, which we did not try, and below, incredibly cramped lofts with mattresses.
Here's the festival organizers' video recap of the festival's debut in 2022:
As we said above, the Tryon Resort has plenty of options for more stages if organizers decide the Earl Scruggs Music Festival should be bigger in the future.
The Tryon International Equestrian Center and Resort is on U.S. 74 between Mill Spring, Rutherfordton and Forest City.
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