A new two-night music performance experiment is coming to Seymour on April 27 & 28 at several listening room venues in downtown Seymour, including the banquet room at Rails Craft Brew & Eatery and the Jackson County Visitor Center.
Artists expected to perform include Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack playing as Daddy, Gabriel Kelley, Levi Parham, Jackson County natives Stephanie Lambring and Don Pedigo, Tim Grimm of Columbus, Danny Flanigan, Alan Rhody, Brooke Annibale, Count This Penny, Justin Paul Lewis, Corey Brumback and others.
The shows will be intimate acoustic performances in the line of VH1’s Storytellers or Nashville, Tennessee’s famous Bluebird Cafe, said festival organizer Shawn Busby of Seymour.
The festival will run from 6 to 11 p.m. April 27 and from 5 to 11 p.m. April 28. Single-day tickets are not available.
“It’s a very unique concept in terms of being a festival,” he said. “A lot of times when people think of festivals, they think of being outside, huge crowds, hot and sweaty, summertime. It’s none of those things.”
All of the performances are indoors, so it won’t be affected by weather. The venues are small to keep noise down so listeners can hear and appreciate the music, Busby said.
“It’s a quiet listening experience,” he said. “So this is not the place to come and talk with your friends while the music is happening. This is a festival for people who really appreciate music and want to hear lyrics. We want to draw in the people who are there for that personal, intimate experience with the artists.”
He hopes to see the festival attract 300 to 500 people in its first year.
Concert goers can purchase a wristband that will get them into any venue and performance as long as it’s not at capacity on both days for $30 through April 2. After that, the price goes up to $40. Tickets will not be available at the door of the venues.
A portion of ticket sales will benefit Southern Indiana Center for the Arts in Seymour.
Many of the artists are planning to play both nights, but the schedule won’t come out until the week of the festival. “You’ll have a couple chances to catch an artist,” Busby said.
“There’s a lot of festivals like this,” he said. “There’s a festival that I go to in Florida in January called the 30A Songwriters Festival, and that’s where we kind of borrowed this idea. Ours is on a much smaller scale. They do 25 rooms and 150 artists. It’s huge.”
Although smaller, Busby said the festival committee is trying to keep the entertainment quality high. All music is original and not covers of other artists, Busby said.
“We’ve got artists coming from Nashville, Tennessee, Oklahoma, from various places across the country,” he said. “And then we’re also bringing in some regional and local acts, as well. We want it to be a storytelling opportunity for the artists, so it needs to be an appreciative audience so the artists can present their songs and be heard.”
Talks of bringing a music event to Seymour started in 2015 with the Vision 2025 project, an initiative to get young professionals involved in making positive changes in Seymour. Busby chairs the Vision 2025 music committee. Other members are Arann Banks, Darnell Dukes, Becky Schepman, Joe Persinger, Roland Freeman and Shane Busby.
