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. We attended the 2022 debut and again in 2023, at which organizers said attendance was twice the first year's.
The festival has everything going for it to 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 2022, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bela Fleck, Molly Tuttle, Alison Brown, Dom Flemons and Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley.
Below, Sam Bush (second from left) and Dominick Leslie (fifth from left) join Bela Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart.
Emmylou Harris, captured from the grandstand on a video screen, headlined Sunday of the 2023 festival.
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.
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 has more than 60 cabins (see more below), a 50-room inn and a 200-site RV park onsite, which are available for stays during the festival.
Two performance stages and a workshop stage were grouped around the central Legends Club building (below), and the Legends Plaza connecting them stayed busy but never seemed overcrowded. The facility has plenty of space to add more stages if 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), which was open for the festival. A sushi restaurant, which was also open, occupies the other wing of the building.
The Flint Hill Stage was in the resort’s International Stadium, which features a 3,000-seat covered grandstand. (More stage area photos below.)
The secondary Foggy Mountain Stage was in a gazebo on Legends Plaza. (More stage area photos below.)
To the right above, notice the carousel across the plaza. It offers free rides.
The workshop stage was on the covered back porch of the Legends Club building (which overlooks the 3,500-seat Tryon Stadium). Below, Scruggs biographer Tommy Goldsmith (left) leads a discussion of “Earl Scruggs and the Banjo’s Future” with music journalist Craig Havighurst and musicians Josh Goforth and Laura Boosinger.
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, an Italian restaurant and a barbecue stand adjacent to the plaza. We have eaten at all of them but the sushi restaurant and were pleased with each meal or snack.
A promenade lined with shops and a restaurant leads to the Silo Bar.
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. 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 on the arena floor.
Several picnic tables — most with umbrellas — were positioned on the arena floor. They provided a good view and space to spread out, but the benches were hard and uncomfortable after a couple of hours. 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.
The video below from 2023 shows how the stadium floor was reconfigured for Sunday's larger audience, with the bar and tables moved aside for camp chairs and a standing-room-only section up front.
Note the SRO section just under the video screen and banner; the sign on the fence says "No chairs in this area."
At right below, see the three luxury cabanas set up for the 2022 show (there were five in 2023) and the VIP area in front of them.
One of the two video screens during Bela Fleck's My Bluegrass Heart in 2022 ...
Some of the Flint Hill Stage audience Sunday afternoon of the 2023 festival ...
The Flint Hill Stage was 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 as well as a gym and rec center. The Foggy Mountain Stage was in a gazebo near the center of Legends Plaza and Roger's Diner.
Several rows of plastic chairs were set out in front of the Foggy Mountain Stage gazebo, and there were a few picnic tables on the plaza nearby. People could bring their own camp chairs, too. Outdoor tables at Roger's Diner, next to the far side of the gazebo, also offered a relaxed view of the stage.
Below, Darin and Brooke Aldridge play a Sunday gospel brunch on the Foggy Mountain Stage.
The Foggy Mountain Stage area was most crowded Saturday afternoon when in 2022 Fireside Collective hosted several other bands 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 this 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 mattreses.
Here's the festival organizers' video recap of the 2022 festival:
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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