The Charlie Poole Music Festival pays homage to Charlie Poole, the influential North Carolina banjo player and singer who, with his North Carolina Ramblers, recorded some of country music's first hit records before dying from the effects of alcoholism at age 41. Many of the acts who play the festival play Poole songs and/or similar old-time music, including the New North Carolina Ramblers (below), led by Poole's great-nephew by marriage Kinney Rorrer (far left).
The Charlie Poole festival had been held in a park in Eden, which today encompasses Poole's hometown of Spray, N.C., for more than a decade before annoucing a move to Rockingham Community College in Wentworth in 2019. But the COVID pandemic and other issues kept the festival from happening again until 2023, which was our first time attending.
Over a Friday evening and the following Saturday afternoon and evening, the 2023 festival presented 12 concerts and an all-star jam plus other presentations on a main stage and 21 youth and adult band and instrumentalist competitions with cash prizes on a second stage.
Among those playing the 2023 Charlie Poole Music Festival were ...
Dom Flemons, "the American Songster," who along with other members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, was awarded the festival's lifetime achievment award.
Riley Baugus, a banjo player, teacher and builder who lives in Walkertown, N.C.
Jerron Paxton, a multi-instrumentalist and thoroughly original intepreter of early traditional, folk, blues, jazz and other roots music.
Putting the festival at Rockingham Community College ensures that it is on well-kept lawns and facilities. Rockingham is the largest campus in the state system at 266 acres, which compares to 151.7 acres at Wilkes Community College, the home of Merlefest and its 12+ stages. The main stage, below, sat against a side of Robert C. Keys Gymnasium on the edge of a large lawn.
Most of the audience sought shade from trees to the left of the stage during the day (above) but began to spread out more toward evening. Still, the 2023 revival of the festival drew an audience of fewer than 100 as of early Saturday evening. Note the plastic white chairs, which were set out in a stack beside the walkway toward the main stage by festival organizers.
Competitions were held in Apple Amphitheater behind the Whitcomb Student Center, which is next to the gym and parking.
Several of the festival's artists also led workshops inside the student center, including a tutorial on Piedmont guitar styles with Dom Flemons. Also, Kinney Rorrer, author of the definitive biography Rambling Blues: The Life & Songs of Charlie Poole, and David Menconi, author of the North Carolina music history Step It Up & Go, presented a discussion of Rorrer's book, which has been expanded and reissued.
In the student center lobby, representatives of the MARC - Museum and Archives of Rockingham County - presented some artifacts about early 20th century mill life in Rockingham County, which Poole was very much a part of before his rise to fame.
The student center and gym are adjacent to parking used for the festival, making access via sidewalks simple. There were also a few food trucks positioned in another parking lot just off of the main stage lawn, and a souvenirs and artisis' merchandise tent nearby.
The 2023 Charlie Poole Music Festival also featured a reunion of Polecat Creek, below, a popular N.C. folk band from the 1990s to the early 2000s featuring Laurelyn Dossett and Kari Sickenberger (second photo below).
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