Trombone Shorty
Sound moves differently in the mountains. It settles into valleys, rides updrafts, hangs in the air long enough to be considered rather than simply heard.
Bear Shadow Music Festival has always understood this – each spring gathering people on a mountainside in Highlands for several days of music and shared attention. From May 29–31, the festival returns with a lineup that moves across gospel, funk, soul, Americana, and country, shaped less by genre than by how music behaves in open space and over time.
This year, Bear Shadow relocates to Ferngrove, the expansive property off Dillard Road, where the additional acreage allows performances to breathe and sound to travel without crowding.
Saturday leans into legacy, rhythm, and forward motion. Mavis Staples, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy Award winner, brings gospel-rooted soul shaped by decades of civil rights history and musical discipline. Best known for songs like “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There,” Staples performs with authority and restraint, relying on phrasing and timing rather than volume.
She shares the day with Trombone Shorty, the New Orleans bandleader whose albums Backatown and Lifted established his brass-forward blend of funk, jazz, and rock. His sets are built for momentum—tight horn lines, sharp rhythmic breaks, constant motion.
Marc Broussard rounds out the day with Southern soul influenced by R&B and blues, drawing from albums such as Carencro and Home, while J & The Causeways bring a classic big-band approach that emphasizes ensemble playing and groove over flash.
Mavis Staples
Sunday turns toward songwriting. Margo Price, whose breakthrough album Midwest Farmer’s Daughter helped reset expectations for modern outlaw country, delivers songs grounded in lived experience and structural clarity.
Pony Bradshaw follows with Appalachian-inflected Americana from Calico Jim, while Kashus Culpepper adds a rawer edge, blending country and soul influences into tightly focused, voice-driven songs.
The weekend’s anchor arrives Sunday night with Charley Crockett. His career has been built almost entirely outside Nashville’s mainstream system – a former street performer who busked across the country and rode freight trains between gigs, developing his sound through repetition and necessity. Albums such as The Man from Waco and Lonesome Drifter draw from country, blues, soul, and Tex-Mex traditions with discipline rather than nostalgia.
Crockett structures his sets with intention: mid-tempo openers, steady pacing, minimal ornamentation. As a Black country musician working beyond the genre’s traditional gatekeepers, he doesn’t frame his work as commentary. He treats country as a wide, living tradition and proves its breadth by occupying it fully.
Bear Shadow succeeds by ignoring the noise that surrounds most festivals and concentrating instead on artists who can actually hold a stage. In a new location with room to expand, that approach feels less like curation and more like conviction.
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