THROUGH THE LENS: Quiet Moments Shine at Nelsonville Music Festival 2024

It was a hot three days at this year’s Nelsonville Music Festival (July 25-28). But with plenty of free water and lots of shade trees and hospitality tents, there were many ways to escape the glaring afternoon sun. 

This was the fest’s third year at its new home at the Snow Fork Event Center on the appropriately named Happy Hollow Road, just minutes away from downtown Nelsonville, Ohio. With the growing pains of the previous two years having dissipated, it felt like home, everything in its place, everything within easy reach. Nestled among the soft hills of southeast Ohio, the machinations of the outside world ceased to exist. It felt like a family reunion.  

While headliners Courtney Barnett, Amyl and the Sniffers, and Killer Mike, along with roots regulars such as Eilen Jewell, Indigo De Souza, and The Felice Brothers, gave rousing sets to enthusiastic fans, my favorite takeaway is more on the quiet side.

The Creekside Stage & the Sycamore Sessions

While the fest has three stages, it’s the intimate one, Creekside, that’s both the most comfortable and intriguing to me. It is unique among all the fests I’ve ever attended. Situated at the bottom of a modestly sloped hill surrounded by the shaded woods, fans — and often entire families — spread out blankets, leaned against trees, or, best of all, leisurely lounged in hammocks. Those hammocks permitted fans not only to hear the music in the most relaxed of manners, but also to enjoy some downtime. Between sets I saw folks snoozing, reading books, or just lazily swaying. 

What you didn’t see were cell phones or other electronic crap. No, folks at this stage were reverential to what the artists were sharing just a few feet away. On the fest’s last day I spoke with several fans who told me this stage is why they came, stayed there all day, and ventured out to the other stages only after the evening’s last set ended, when darkness enveloped the minimally lit stage.

As befitting the Creekside Stage’s physical setting, the music played there was mostly introspective, even dreamy at times. Be it Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s “I See a Darkness,” SUSS’s ambient country, fest regular Michael Hurley’s outsider take on folk music, the mesmerizing guitar work of Yasmin Willams and Laurel Premo, or the vignettes of life in rural Kentucky by The Local Honeys, you could call what I heard “soundscapes,” music you could get lost in. You were continuously being taken to places (all different) you never knew existed. It was roots music without boundaries.

The other notable aspect of the Creekside Stage is it is the home of the Sycamore Sessions. These sessions, which began as the Gladden House Sessions at the fest’s former home at a local community college, are recorded by WOUB Public Media and Ohio University’s School of Media Arts and Studies (both in nearby Athens) for later online viewing. This year’s edition, its ninth, will be available early in the fall. Previous sessions can be found here.

Next year I’m taking a hammock.

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