Wayne "The Train" Hancock to perform at this year's Muddy Roots Music Festival. photo by Kentaro M Photography

Have you ever loved a band so much that you’d do just about anything to hear them play? I don’t mean camping out in front of the ticket box office or flashing the lead singer to get back stage. I’m talking about putting together a outdoor music fest with some of the greatest acts that ever lived. I’ll even give you a hint: it’s not Bonnaroo.

Have you ever heard of the Muddy Roots Festival?

Jason Galaz likes a lot of bands, but for whatever reason, they never seemed to come to Nashville to play, he says. Instead of sitting around complaining about it—or driving 600 miles to see them—he started booking them gigs.

“We put on Muddy Roots shows for a lot of the bands that I liked, but couldn’t see. I would find a show for them here. That way, I could enjoy their music.”

Galaz held shows for some 13 years, but then he was ready for something bigger.

“It was the basic motivation of wanting to get all these bands in one spot, but it turned into something more than that—it turned into a movement,” he explained.

With the help of his brother, Anthony, and “a good handful of friends that help,” Galaz made his dream happen in 2010.

They found about 50 acres of campsite in Cookeville and geared it towards the flavor of music they wanted.

“And we have free hot showers out there, which is like the biggest thing,” he laughed.

As for the music?

“To me, it’s pretty eclectic, but from the outside, it might not appear to be so,” he says.

The Muddy Roots Festival features everything from bluegrass and old country (not the pop junk on the radio) to rockabilly and string bands.

“A lot of the bands are people in their 20s and 30s who grew up in rock ‘n’ roll or punk rock, and they are blending the music they grew up with with old roots music that they’re discovering,” Galaz said. “You might have a bluegrass band, but they play real fast, and they’re all tattooed up.”

Galaz said he also tries to book some roots music. This year, he’d planned to feature Charlie Louvin, who unfortunately passed away a couple of months ago.

Charlie was a local guy. He used to live out in Bell Buckle and more recently in Wartrace, Tenn.

“I went to a benefit (for Charlie) recently,” Galaz recalled. “He’s such a figure that even Allison Krauss came out and played for his benefit—came to the middle of Bell Buckle, Tennessee—in the middle of nowhere.”

With Charlie Louvin gone, Galaz turned to Don Maddox with the Maddox Brothers & Rose, who is in the Country Music Hall of Fame, but hasn’t been back since the he was inducted in the 1950s. Last year the festival featured Billy Joe Shaver.

Galaz says it’s important to respect our elders, despite illnesses and last-minute mishaps.

“It’s worth it to have them out there to see the people who are actually do the inspiring. They’re kind of forgotten. A lot of promoters won’t book them unless they’re popular again.”

If you don’t recognize these names—say, except for Allison Krauss—it’s okay.

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“If I brought most of the bands up in local bars, most people would not know them, but they do have a following,” Galaz explained. “They might play in much larger bands, and this is their side band. I’ve got a guy that plays upright bass for Hank 3, and he has his own band that will be playing.”

At the same time Galaz launched Muddy Roots Festival last year, an outdoor fest in the Midwest called Deep Blues Festival packed its tents up and called it quits.

“That (blues) would be one vein in our roots, but we share a similar fan base,” he continued. “We had a good chunk of them drove down from Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and even Canada.”

While music lovers drove from all over the country to Muddy Roots Festival last year, not many locals showed up. Galaz said he was disappointed that about 98 percent of attendees from last year weren’t from here.

Regardless, he views the launch as a success.

“I think it kind of makes a statement. It was a jab at other festivals in a way because it’s more about good music, not record sales. We base on talent and the amount of soul in the music, not popularity,” Galaz said.

Muddy Roots Festival offers space for bands whose sounds are conglomerates of various influences.

“In music stores, bands are labeled by genres, but to be honest, it doesn’t work that way. Most bands fall in between genres, and that’s what we’re promoting. It goes along with the name Muddy Roots—the sound is all muddled up. There’s hundreds of music festivals, but we’re the kind of … it’s all about bands that are hard to classify. It’s a disservice to bands to classify them.”

So what happens when you get all these different musicians together at one outdoor music fest? A jam-bandin’ good time.

“It’s the type of festival where you can hang out and camp with these bands. It’s not like a separate class of people behind a VIP line. We’re all friends. People are all out singing in front of a campfire with their favorite musicians. If there is a major band of this style of music, this is where they would come to hang out.”

They’re all showing up on Labor Day weekend this year—a few months later than they did last year, when the festival was held on Memorial Day weekend. The line-up has been announced, but Galaz says there’s one other person that can’t be named until mid-June. Still, this year’s line-up doubles last year’s performances.

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“It’s a pretty big lineup to us. If I had money to pay them, I’d have tripled the amount of bands. I wish I could; maybe next year. The more tickets that are sold, the more bands we book. It’s not like the more tickets that are sold, ‘Cool, I’m going to buy a Corvette.’ We’re just working class people paying for this ourselves, with the support of friends. It’s not a big corporate festival.”

Blake Judd will be filming a documentary at this year’s event. It will have a sort of David and Goliath theme to show how a working man puts on festival like this. Galaz owns Color My Shirts, a small business in Smyrna, with his step-dad, Simon Foord.

Muddy Roots Festival is also staying in line with the eco-friendly mindset that most outdoor music fests boast, only this time Galaz is taking it a step further.

“We’re going to be installing electric vehicle charging stations that are powered by the sun. At least if you own one and you come to the festival, you’ll have a place to charge without raising anybody’s bills.”

FYI
Tickets to this year’s festival are $55. Visit muddyrootsmusic.com for more information and to view the complete line-up.