Kentucky’s hidden gem music festival: Come for headliners, stay for small-town charm

If you want to take its name — and, to a degree, its mission — literally, Somerset’s Master Musicians Festival has built itself around the music of fore-bearers. Its featured performers have very much been masters of their craft and genre, elders serving as ambassadors for the multi-generational multi-culturalism that remains a guidepost as the event enters its fourth decade this weekend.

Through the years, though, the history, influence and even notoriety of such masters have been represented in different ways. In 2008, pianist Pinetop Perkins played MMF less than two weeks after turning 95. Though a pioneering blues and roots artist who had forged alliances in his career with such heavyweights as Muddy Waters, Perkins was being honored in Somerset by many attendees who were likely hearing him perform for the first time.

Fast forward a decade later. Capping the 2018 MMF lineup was John Prine, an artist long revered not only for the everyman sentiments of his songs, but for his Western Kentucky ties, having spent childhood summers in Muhlenberg County. The Rolling Stones probably couldn’t have matched the crowd response Prine received that year.

Prine’s history was perhaps not as extensive Perkins’s dossier, but his both legacies fit squarely into a longstanding music festival that prides itself on community, art and heart.

The headliner for this weekend’s 31st MMF? The Wallflowers, the Grammy-winning, Jacob Dylan-led roots/rock/pop troupe that might seem a tad youthful to qualify as a master until you realize it has been making music for 35 years.

“We’ve had Counting Crows and then Blues Traveler in the past, so a ’90s rock band tends to be attractive to our community and local audience,” said Julie Harris, president of the board of directors for Master Musicians Festival. “We don’t want to do that too often, but we definitely have a lot of excitement when we choose those kinds of bands because they’re nostalgic. The Wallflowers, Blues Traveler and Counting Crows were all really popular when MMF was taking off as a festival in the mid ’90s. It’s kind of cool to have a band from the time period for that reason.”

With a track record now a full three decades long under its belt, it is understandable that what qualifies as a master at MMF reflects a generational shift. But that goes hand-in-hand with the growth the festival has seen in almost every aspect of its design.

“For me, it’s about fine-tuning all the details,” said Tiffany Finley, who was appointed as the festival’s first full time executive director in 2020, but has worked with it extensively for the past 14 summers. “I can really hone in on what can make our festival special, on what can make it different than other festivals. I think the community, just being on board with us, makes it stronger. And just seeing the generational changes. All of my friends’ kids are out there helping me. We really try to make sure younger folks are involved. One day, I’m going to retire from this or go into other things. I’m going to need someone who is just as much in love with the festival as our board is.”

“My dad actually was on the original board of directors for the festival,” Harris added. “He and I talk about this a lot. It definitely looks different from when the bands were set up on a trailer on the back of a truck at SomerSport Park. But the actual mission is absolutely the same. Even though we may have introduced artists that people know — and by now, maybe, it’s more than just the elders or respected musicians in this community and in Kentucky — we’re bringing in nationally known name acts as our headliners. But we still are dedicated to filling the rest of that lineup with musicians that people likely haven’t heard before and music we hope educates about different genres and art. All of that was the initial vision of MMF. If anything has changed, it’s just that it’s grown in the same way that the festival has.”

Growth hasn’t always been easy for MMF. In 2019, a massive Saturday evening thunderstorm forced a last-minute cancellation of headliner Jason Isbell. In 2020, it was shut down entirely, along with nearly all summer festivals, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. When it returned in 2021 with Blues Traveler as headliner, MMF saw audience sizes and regional support swell.

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“We had an incredible crowd that year,” Harris said. “We had had, as a festival, two really devastating years, so we had to take some serious risks to insure the festival’s future stayed intact. And they worked out. It was a little bit scary at first, but they helped us revive. We chose to hire Tiffany full time, which, I will say till I’m gone, was the best decision we could have ever made.

“I remember in 2021 standing on Festival Field. Blues Traveler was playing. I was walking around all of these people. It was one of our largest crowds to date and I’m thinking, ‘We did it. We pulled it off. The festival is still here. Look at all these people. We survived COVID.’ There are some larger feelings there, too. It was one the first major events in our community that had happened after the pandemic. I just remember feeling a sense of relief and joy.”

For Finley, one of the highpoints of her festival association was securing Prine as a headliner in 2018 after numerous previous attempts stalled.

“People are still glowing from Willie Nelson, too, when he played MMF (in 2013.) But to have ‘Paradise’ (a chronicle of the environmental devastation of Muhlenberg County that has long served as one of Prine’s signature compositions) be the last song John played here was wonderful. We tried for, like, eight or nine years to bring him here, but he was always touring Europe.”

If there is a predominant charm to MMF that has remained undiminished through the years, it is a sense of community spirit. Larger-scale festivals have surfaced in the region since MMF began (Lexington’s Railbird, Louisville’s Bourbon & Beyond) while other struggling events have died off. But the senses of celebration and welcoming from Somerset sponsors and businesses supporting MMF have allowed the event to retain a small-town intimacy even as it reaches for major league artistic bookings.

“When you show up at MMF, you’re tucked in this little hidden gem of a wooded area behind Somerset Community College that nobody even knows is there half the time,” Harris said. “It just feels like its own tiny community back in there. And I hope we never lose that.”

“We don’t have to be the biggest and most expensive music festival,” Finley said. “But we can be the nicest, most well run and most hospitable. That can set us apart. That community feel, that feeling you’re talking about, that’s what we want to showcase to our tourists. That’s what Somerset and Pulaski County are all about. We talk a lot about this, about how we bring our community to our audience.”

Master Musicians Festival

When: July 18-20

Where: Festival Field at Somerset Community College, 808 Monticello St. in Somerset

Admission: $55-$100. Children 12 and younger will be admitted free with adult ticket

Online: mastermusiciansfestival.org

Master Musicians Festival lineup

All events are at Somerset Community College except where noted.

Thursday, July 18

The Virginia, 214 E. Mt. Vernon St. (Tickets $10)

7:30 p.m. - Somerset Big Band and Amanda Balltrip

Friday, July 19

Horse Solider Stage

5 p.m. – Shelby Lore

6:30 p.m. - Nigel Wearne

8:30 p.m. – Jeremie Albino

10 a.m. – Mae Simpson

Citizens National Bank Stage

4:20 p.m. – Lucas Wayne

6 p.m. – Bek and the Starlight Revue

7:40 p.m. – Spooky Fox

9:20 p.m. - Hunter Flynn

Saturday, July 20

Horse Soldier Stage

1 p.m. – Young songwriters panel

2:40 p.m. – Lance Rogers

4:20 p.m. – Rob Dread

6 p.m. – Eddie 9V

7:40 p.m. – Sundy Best

9:30 p.m. – The Wallflowers

Citizens National Stage

12:20 p.m. Gravel Switch

2 p.m. – Noeline Hofmann

3:40 p.m. – Abe Partridge

5:20 p.m. – July Moon

7 p.m. – Cody Lee Meece

8:50 p.m. – Ruen Brothers

11 p.m. – Bee Taylor