About the Festival
"This is the sixth year for the Red, White and Bluegrass Festival. Actually, the City of Morganton has been doing a fireworks show and a July 4th celebration for many years along with the Parks and Recreation Department. It has grown into a bluegrass festival in the fact that we'd have one group usually come play every year at the July 4th celebration and it seemed like everytime we got a bluegrass group, we seemed to have a larger crowd.
We started with Mike Snyder out of Nashville, TN who was a comedian at the Grand Ole Opry, he was our headliner at the July 4th celebration one year and that's when we started naming it the Red, White and Bluegrass Festival and it's just grown ever since. We started with one band, now we got 28 of the finest groups of bluegrass playing one weekend here. It's grown into a super event. Right now, we're definitely one of the largest traditional bluegrass festivals in North Carolina and one of the largest in the world."
-- Gary Leonhardt, Director of Morganton Parks and Recreation
