Music fans, fall festival time is coming to The Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park (SOSMP) at Live Oak, Fla! Festival season this year opens with Magnolia Fest featuring Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine, Stephen Marley, Jim Lauderdale, Mavis Staples, The Duhks, Keller Williams with the Travelin’ McCourys, Grandpa’s Cough Medicine, Canary In The Coalmine, Big Cosmo, Tropic of Cancer, Tornado Rider, The Stacks, Steve Pruett’s Back From The Brink, Sloppy Joe, Seth Walker, Sentropolis, Rev.

WARMfest is a three-day music and arts festival dedicated to helping preserve the White River. WARMfest promotes environmental responsibility, independent business and artisans, and sustainable goods and services through the magic of music, art and culture. WARMfest has a vision to restore and promote the White River to return it to the grandeur of a century ago. The mission is to educate the community to envision this great river as a recreational and visually appealing natural resource.

Bear Creek Music & Art Festival has announced a Benefit on Wednesday, November 13th featuring The New Mastersounds, The Revivalists, Toubab Krewe, ArtOfficial and Freddy’s Finest, prior to the festival kick off the following day. Taking place at Bear Creek’s home, Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, FL, the event will celebrate the life of Shelley, the wife of longtime SOSMP production manager Michael Allegretto. Shelley passed away tragically earlier this spring, leaving behind Michael and their two children.

Golden Gate Park hosted San Francisco’s 6^th Outside Lands Festival this past weekend, bringing in scores of talent ranging from musical to culinary to comedic. The festival sold out more than a month in advance, yet the grounds felt deceptively spacious all three days. Although the fog hardly let up all weekend, two things were clear: the leggings-as-pants trend is here to stay, and the comedy aspect of Outside Lands has been severely underrated thus far.

COASTLINE FESTIVAL announces the lineup for the inaugural festival taking place Saturday, November 9th in Tampa and Sunday, November 10th in West Palm Beach.  With all-day music on 2 stages, 11 bands, a wide array of food trucks, over 25 craft beers with a heavy tilt toward Florida’s own wildly popular hand craft brewers, and regionally renowned artists, COASTLINE FESTIVAL will have something for all.

The 39th Annual Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Uncle Pen Days Festival will be held September 18-21, 2013 at the Bill Monroe Memorial Bluegrass Music Park & Campground in Brown County, Indiana. The 4-day event includes a stellar line-up of over 30 bluegrass bands, instrument and vocal workshops, jam sessions, camping, food, vendors, and fellowship.

After the intense rains of the night before, everyone’s spirits were lifted as the second day of the 2013 Rhythms on the Rio Riverbank Fest dawned bright and clear. It helped having the Mojones from Creede, CO, cook up some intense blues first thing.

Resiliency marked the opening of the Rhythms on the Rio Riverside Fest this past Saturday. After the spring fires, the summer monsoons hit the region hard, coloring the Rio Grande with black runoff from the burn scars higher in the mountains and swelling the waters into a rushing torrent. More of those rains hit the festival late afternoon creating some scrambling between the sound crew and the bands and forcing festivalgoers under any available tarps and canopies.

Forty-six years ago, Jimi Hendrix took the stage at the Monterey Pop Festival and set his guitar on fire, ushering in a new definition of rock and roll.

Rhythms on the Rio Riverside Fest in South Fork, Colorado, constantly amaze me. Though a small festival, it rounds up some of the best talent in the region and manages to snag a big name touring band or two.