With the announcement of internationally famous headliners like The Roots at next month’s NC Folk Festival, it can be easy to overlook just how many of the festival’s acts still have North Carolina ties.
“As important as it is for us to bring in these great headliners, it’s also important to us that 50 percent of all the acts come from North Carolina or have North Carolina roots,” said Jodee Ruppel, executive director and chief development officer for the festival. “We haven’t done the best job of advertising that. There’s always so much to talk about that can get lost. But it really is the NC Folk Festival.”
The organizers of the festival, held in Greensboro since 2015, are doing their best this year to be sure homegrown talent gets the spotlight it deserves. We recently caught up with Ruppel and ethnomusicologist Savannah Thorne, the festival’s artistic director, to talk about this aspect of the festival ahead of its return to downtown Greensboro September 18-20.
This is one of a series of pieces about the festival we’ll be publishing in the lead-up to this year’s festival.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Even though I’ve attended the festival for years, I don’t think I realized that about half the performers are from North Carolina or have ties to the state. How long has that been an important, conscious thing the festival is doing?
Ruppel: We started that when we both came on in 2024, I think. I’m the first new executive director of the North Carolina Folk Festival, and so it was kind of a chance to step back and see how we wanted to position ourselves. And we really leaned into that: the headliner/50 percent. And I think you really see it every year. We had Jonathan Scales last year. He’s from here, but now he lives up in New York, right? We had Steep Canyon Rangers last year. This year, you’ll see some local favorites like Karla Davis and Evan Blackerby & The Bandwagon.
Thorne: The Depot Stage is where we love to show off a lot of our North Carolina favorites. Sunday, all day at the Depot Stage, is dedicated to Not Your Average Folk contest winners, both past and present, to sort of bring back some of that emphasis. So that’s an entire day. That whole stage will be nothing but North Carolina musicians that have been voted on as audience favorites. But on top of that, The Flatiron is completely dedicated to North Carolina musicians. The Jam stage is dedicated to North Carolina musicians, and the Folk Life area is dedicated to North Carolina musicians.
We’re trying to keep that money in North Carolina. I want our North Carolina music ecosystem to be thriving, and it can’t do that if we send all of our money everywhere else.
Ruppel: And there’s so much here, right? They’re not all just what I would consider, when you think of North Carolina, the traditional genre. There are a lot of different musicians, singers, the Montagnard dancers. I think that’s really special too, to remind people that all these acts and people don’t all look the same.
Who are some of the North Carolina musicians you’re excited about this year?
Thorne: We’re very excited about the Not Your Average Folk contest. This year we have d.a.l.i.a., who got first place. She’s really exciting. She’s a Mexican American singer-songwriter who is very talented.
Sayaka Matsuoka did a great Q&A with her for us earlier this year.
Thorne: Oh, yeah! She’s incredible and really thoughtful, and I’m very excited to see her perform. I am very excited to see Abigail Dowd doing a singer-songwriter series in The Flatiron. She’s bringing on folks from ReString Appalachia, which is going to be really cool. And then I’m very excited to see Tom Troyer have his debut at the Folk Festival. Tom has never performed at the Folk Festival, despite being one of the most, I think, influential people in the Greensboro music scene. I’m very excited for him to have his moment. And we have some acts coming back. We have The Queen Bees coming back. We have Evan Blackerby and King M Dot, past Not Your Average Folk contest winners, coming back.
Ruppel: Karla Davis is a huge one. She sells out The Flat quite often. She’s from here, moved to Nashville. Was on one of the early seasons of The Voice and did pretty well. She stayed in Nashville about 12 years and tried to make music work there. And then was just like, ‘I’m tired of the scene in the city.’ And she actually opened for Edwin McCain the other night at The Pyrle. And she said, ‘I don’t know why I was trying to make music in Nashville. Like, this is where you make music. I’m so glad to be home. There’s such a good supportive culture. It allows for creative juices.’ I’m sure I’m butchering what she said. But I was like, ‘Dang it, did we get that on video somewhere?’ This should be an ad for the Greensboro music scene.’
Thorne: I think the important thing to stress about that is that we are not inventing the Greensboro music scene. The Greensboro music scene has been great since long before I got here in 2013. We are just showing off what already lives here, and we are just showing off all the passion and creativity that already exists in Greensboro. And this music scene really is very cool. And I think that what we’re doing is trying to cultivate more of an audience scene because we have a thriving music scene. I think we don’t have a thriving scene where audience members want to invest in that, because they don’t know it’s there yet. And I think that that’s a big emphasis that we’re trying to put on this. It doesn’t just happen at the festival. It happens year-round, in all of your bars and all of the venues around town. There’s cool music here in Greensboro
Ruppel: That’s very well said. You know, I’m always shocked. I’m on my Rotary tour right now, where I go present to all the Rotary clubs about what’s happening at the festival. And people come up. And they’re like, “Oh yeah, I was just at The Orange Peel [in Asheville] last weekend. I’m going to The Cat’s Cradle [in Carrboro] this weekend. And I’m like, ‘Have you gone to The Flatiron?’ They’re like, ‘What’s that?’ And I say, ‘Really? Because it’s only two miles from your house, and it’s amazing.’
I think for whatever reason Greensboro has always lost acts to places that are sometimes not even bigger but are more famous music towns like Asheville, Carrboro, Durham, or Chapel Hill.
Thorne: I think it’s because they have mid-sized venues, and that’s something that we’ve really been missing. It’s hard for musicians and music towns to grow if there aren’t venues that can accommodate you at every step of your growth. And I think that’s something that The Pyrle is really helping a lot with; places like The Move are helping a lot with. And that hopefully we can help people see The Crown at the Carolina Theatre in a similar light, and The Grand in a similar light, The Back Table, and Magnolia House.
There’s all of these different places where you can go see music and musicians of different levels and stages. And I think that The Pyrle is giving us that mid-sized venue to compete with a Cat’s Cradle, to compete with an Orange Peel, to compete with everything that’s happening in Winston-Salem. And hopefully those musicians will have enough opportunity here to stay. I feel confident that The Pyrle is going to help make sure that that happens.
Ruppel: And I think just even coming to some of the bigger-name bands of The Pyrle, and then you realize, ‘Ah, there’s up-and-coming bands at The Flat. Let me go to The Flat now, right? Because that’s 10 bucks. That’s easy. Like, start to get into the music scene because you’re around it more. And so it’s been really fun to watch just the energy happen around all of that. I’m very excited about where we’re going. And we’re excited for that to be part of the festival, with performances and after-parties, to drive people to these local places and this North Carolina music.
