Take 80 acres in rural Virginia an hour’s drive out of Roanoke. Drop in a line-up of the top musicians and acts from across the jam, blues, bluegrass, Zydeco, Appalacian, and Americana space. Create scenic views from the Blue Ridge Plateau that would make a National Geographic photographer’s shutter finger envious.
And you have FloydFest.
Bordering Patrick and namesake Floyd counties, the festival is pushing two decades as a staple in the Midlantic coast music scene. Before there was Wanee (RIP), Mountain Jam, Peach, or Lockn’, there was FloydFest.
It’s attracted such acts as The Neville Brothers, Del McCoury Band, Railroad Earth, Hot Tuna, The Avett Brothers, The North Mississippi Allstars, Ricky Skaggs, Gary Clark Jr., Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, JJ Grey and MOFRO, Keller Williams, Leftover Salmon. Tauk, even Gregg Allman.
Get the drift? Don’t try to pigeon-hole this fest. Last year’s FloydFest featured Foster The People, Greta Van Fleet, Gov’t Mule, and Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, helping it earn the Best Music Festival in 2018. Time Magazine in 2016 even called it “One of 240 Reasons to Celebrate America.”
RoadtripMojo dialed in with co-founder Kris Hodges and Chief Operating Officer Sam Calhoun. In a chat that was both stream of consciousness and detail focused, and plenty insightful, the two discussed their backgrounds, FloydFest’s history dating back to 2002, and their plans for FloydFest ‘19.
Hodges is a New England-native who migrated to Roanoke as an artist and musician who’s dabbled in every genre – punk rock, metal, folk, jazz, blues – to arrive at this, his 47th year, with “a love and passion for just live music is really what it’s all about. That, and art, and the lifestyle that surrounds everything to do with that, which includes the outdoors.”
Hodges is an avid hiker and camper whose touring with the Grateful Dead in late ’80s, early ’90s that ignited his love of camping. “We would camp out, so I started to fall in love with having a campfire and being outdoors in a tent.”
So it was when he was trying to find his way, his mom suggested Floyd County, Virginia, because there was a lot of freaks and artists up there. He tracked down local legend, musicologist, self-taught genius artist, poet, painter, writer, and luthier A’Court Bason, who lived on a commune called Travianna Farm. Hodges spent three years studying under Bason deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
By the mid-’90s, Hodges saw Phish and Dave Matthews and Coran Capshaw and Blues Traveler and Widespread Panic. He saw H.O.R.D.E. Tour and Lollapalooza and had the spark for his own fest. But why Floyd County?
“It’s just filled with artists and farmers and people that are great thinkers. We wanted to represent the community in a huge way, and kind of showcase it to the world. no other music festivals in Virginia,” Hodges says, “To think that FloydFest had a lot to do with inspiring a movement here, not only in Virginia, but in a radius of God knows … three, four, five hundred miles. “It just seemed like the perfect canvas to paint the idea for a festival.
“I just started to fall in love with the idea of creating something that was more than just the music. I really, after living on the commune and trying to find myself, so to speak, up on the mountain,” he says. “I realized that the experience was more important than anything, and the music should be soundtrack and inspiration behind the experience.”
Fast forward to 2001, after Hodges had run Oddfellas Cantina, a small restaurant and venue up in Floyd County, Virginia, he and his wife sold the restaurant and committed to staging the first FloydFest in 2002. More recently, a management crew joined up to back Hodges’ vision. And 18 years later, FloydFest ’19 – “Voyage Home” – will set sail this summer.
RoadtripMojo: It says a lot to be able to keep something like that going for that long. How have you done that?
Kris Hodges: That’s a good question. I was always vested into making an art out of business. Make no mistake, I ran every facet of this company up until, really, about two years ago, when I was like, ‘Uncle, man. I cannot take it anymore.’ I was the CEO up until this year. There’s an art to business, as well. You have to understand everything from the trash pickup all the way to the financials. I put a lot of time into studying that. After 16 years of that, I laugh at people that go to school for business. Nothing like being in the field and actually doing it. I tell you, at this point, I have a hell of an education on business.
“Backing up to the first year, trying to understand the trend in American music festivals. The first year, I came across a poster, and I remember placing on the poster, ‘The future of music festivals.’ I was really proud of the vision behind it. Lo and behold, Bonnaroo dropped their lineup a few months after I dropped mine. Well, shit, here we go. Here we go. Of course, I didn’t have the financial backing. People used to say, ‘Who are your sponsors?’ I was like, ‘Sponsors? This is a complete gamble. It’s all ticket sales, man.’ I don’t think I even broke even for seven years. We ate a lot of rice, a lot of beans. Anything we could do to survive in those early years, until we really started looking into sponsorships, finally, in about year five.”
RTM: And here you are. Where do you get your creative juice from?
Kris Hodges: For real? Go to nature. There’s a plethora of endless angles and ideas and philosophies and color and movement in nature itself. I think that’s what I love about the creative process. If you open yourself to it, it’s endless. It truly is. It’s a beautiful thing, man. I try to travel around the world. I try to meet different cultures, different people, different ideas, different music. I just try to keep it open. R&D, of course, is relentless. I think I spend literally 80 percent of my time just R&Ding different music, different events. Doesn’t necessarily have to be music events. It can be showings, concerts. It could be an herbal festival in Zimbabwe. I mean, there’s just so many different avenues on this wonderful canvas called planet Earth to draw inspiration from.”
RTM: Yeah. Where does it go from here? What’s the next cool thing? How have you elevated your game this year, versus what you’ve done last?
Sam Calhoun: We wouldn’t be here in this capacity if every single year there wasn’t new experiences that we create fresh for our patrons. So, along with the theme, it’s not just a theme that we let go and leave. When Kris gets here and does the lineup, it’s purposeful programming. Everything fits together in this Tetris. It makes a lot of sense when you look at it as the whole, makes a lot of sense on a daily basis.
“But beyond that, we’re all about art. Onsite art installations are very huge for us. We want to surprise people. We want to delight people with something that their eyes have not seen before, their ears haven’t heard before. For instance, in our main field, in the middle of all of our eight stages, we create a new onsite art installation every single year.
“Without giving too much away, of course, if you look at our logo this year, we have this beautiful ship with a mermaid in the front and stars in the back. Our onsite art installation will be very accessible. It’ll be tangible. It’ll be based on that logo.”
Next Up: A deep peek into what makes FloydFest a music festival camper’s dream.