Join us in making this year's Watermelon Pickers' Festival a spectacular success! By sponsoring the festival, you'll help us continue a cherished tradition that keeps bluegrass and roots music thriving in our community. Your support ensures that festival-goers leave with unforgettable memories and the knowledge that your contribution played a key role in their wonderful experience and memories of a great weekend of music and community. Click the button below to learn more. Then, get in touch and request a sponsorship application-let's make magic happen together!

Band Lineup and Schedule:

Michael Cleveland and Jason Carter
Michael Cleveland and Jason Carter are two of the most celebrated fiddlers in bluegrass music. Both deeply rooted in tradition yet unafraid to push musical boundaries, they have come together for a new collaboration, Carter and Cleveland.

Kaia Kater
Kaia Kater is a songwriter, banjoist, and composer whose music explores history, identity, and resilience. Her new album, Strange Medicine (out May 2024 on Free Dirt Records), weaves together the voices of women and revolutionaries throughout time, transforming stories of oppression into defiant expressions of power. Co-produced with Joe Grass and featuring collaborators like Aoife O'Donovan, Allison Russell, and Taj Mahal, the album pushes the boundaries of Americana, incorporating influences from jazz, minimalist composition, and film scoring. A gifted storyteller, Kater uses her songs to reclaim narratives, challenge expectations, and celebrate the strength found in self-expression.

The Mammals
The Mammals are folksingers Ruth Ungar, Mike Merenda, and a cohort of compelling collaborators who form a touring quintet on the fiddle, banjo, guitar, organ, bass, and drums. Over the past 20 years they have quietly composed a canon of original songs ("Some of the best songwriting of their generation" - LA Times) that both reflect our culture and offer a vision of how the world might yet be. "These days we sing about what we're for over what we're against," says singer/songwriter, Mike Merenda, and what they're for is "nothing short of sublime" according to (Americana UK).

The Hackensaw Boys
Roots music shapeshifters Hackensaw Boys have been making audiences holler and dance since way back in 1999. Formed in Charlottesville and now based in Lynchburg, Virginia, this hard traveling group has built an international following for their high-energy performances and down-to-earth presentation. Despite their roots in traditional music, their homegrown aesthetic (bolstered by the "charismo," their calling card percussion instrument handmade from cans and other metal objects) belies their contemporary approach to songcraft and showmanship. Hackensaw Boys' music today has just as much in common with the straight-ahead sound of the Del McCoury Band as it does with the indie rock of Pavement and the modern folk of the Avett Brothers and Mountain Goats.

Larry Keel's Electric Larry Land
Larry Keel's latest project, "Electric Larry Land" presents Keel's simultaneously gritty and suave original music applied to an electric format, creating what he calls a "sonic groove-and-vibe machine". With this unit, Keel gives rein to his innate drive to expand his songs and playing style with this high-powered, highly creative and highly accomplished 4-piece band comprised of electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass and drums. It's dynamic Acoustic Rock at its finest. Keel and "Electric Larry Land" are in full production mode on a new recording, with an EP set for release summer, 2024.

The Woodshedders
The Woodshedders are an Indie Roots band boasting four all-original studio albums and performances at hundreds of festivals and shows. The band consists of Dwayne Brooke on guitar and vocals, Fiddlin' Dave Van Deventer on Fiddle, Jesse Shultazaberger on drums, Will Spaulding on guitar, banjo, and vocals, and Randy Ball on bass. The Woodshedders bring lyricism and musicality to fun, danceable shows that swerve through Honky-Tonk, Gypsy, Appalachian, and Vintage Rock n' Roll, often in the same song. They are the also the traditional late night band at the beloved dance barn at Virginia's celebrated
 Watermelon Pickers' Fest.

Seth Mulder and Midnight Run
Born in the holler of Tennessee's first legal moonshine distillery, Seth Mulder and Midnight Run blend tradition with innovation through genuine songwriting and tasteful arrangements, bringing to life their original music and lost covers like no other in the genre. Combining elements of bluegrass, country, and folk music, their sound resonates with traditional and contemporary audiences alike. "In the day and age where authenticity is everything, Seth Mulder and Midnight Run are the real deal."

Click here to Buy Tickets