The North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic will be returning to Waterford this weekend for its eighth annual music festival, catering to North Mississippi blues and its originators.
North Mississippi blues was discovered during the mid-‘90s through the recordings of R.L Burnside, Otha Turner and Junior Kimbrough.
The festival is unique due to its strict North Mississippi Hill blues lineup and traditional qualities.
“It is a picnic sort of like when people used to gather for the weekend, have fun, play music and visit with each other,” said the festival’s event coordinator, who asked to not be named.
The picnic carries on the legacy of the North Mississippi blues founders. Through various performances and interpretation, the festival will feature a lineup of artists who have direct relations to the founders.
“We have a killer lineup,” the event coordinator said. “Saturday will actually be Blue Mountain’s last show.”
Blue Mountain, which was formed in 1991 by Cary Hudson (guitar and vocals) and Laurie Stirratt (bass and harmony vocals), twin sister of Wilco bass-player John Stirratt, is a country-rock band founded in Oxford in 1991. The band reunited in the summer of 2007 after having been broken up since 2001, thereafter performing at the famed South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, as well as headlining the Double Decker Festival in 2008. The duo announced earlier this year the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic will be their final show and the band will break up after.
George McConnell, a well-known Oxford local and Vicksburg native, will also be performing at the picnic. A former band member of Widespread Panic and present owner of the 512 bed-and-breakfast in Oxford, McConnell will be performing Saturday afternoon with his band George McConnell and The Nonchalants.
For the performers, the festival is an annual homecoming away from tours and busy schedules.
“All of these artists are from around this area and while they travel all over the world, they hardly ever get to be together,” the event coordinator said. “It is more like a family reunion for the artists. They don’t just perform their set. They stay for the whole weekend and bring their families.”
The picnic will be held in Waterford in Marshall County at Betty Davis’ Ponderosa. Directions are available on the festival’s website. The festival will span June 28 and 29, featuring live music both days starting at 4:00 p.m. on Friday and 10:00 a.m. Saturday. The festival will run until midnight each day. Those interested in attending can either pay $25 Friday and Saturday, or they can pay $25 for a camping pass which can be for one or three nights.
