From Sept. 5-8, on Cool Whisper Farm in North Hillsdale, NY the Oldtone Music Festival will bring music lovers old and young together to celebrate the music of the past and even the future.
Ahead of the 2024 installment of one of the largest roots music festivals, I had the chance to speak with Trevor Roush, the co-producer of the Oldtone Music Festival. The festival is booting up again for the first time since 2022 following the worldwide pandemic caused music venues and festivals everywhere to close. On that fateful day, a small one-day festival was held and an unlikely visitor helped bring it back bigger and better than ever three years later.
But first, what is the Oldtone Music Festival? A three-day music festival in the Hudson Valley, Oldtone Music Festival aims to promote and preserve Roots music. “Roots music to me is just all music.” says Trevor Roush, “At Oldtone, it’s not just bluegrass. We have Conjunto music, which is, a traditional Mexican music, folk music, Cajun music, old-time string band music, New Orleans jazz, New Orleans R&B… You know, it’s just all music.”
As I spoke to Trevor, he was looking over volunteers who had shown up from across the country to help put together the festival. “I feel like what’s important to me about roots music, and I’m seeing it firsthand right now is that it brings people together. Cross-generationally, and cross-culturally, they all believe in this type of music. And, you know, I’m watching 40 volunteers of all different ages from other parts of the country build stages right now and set up tents. It’s like a real family-type art… There is no there is no one person here with one job. Everyone’s sort of all over the place.”
The motto of Oldtone is “Participation is preservation.” Trevor explains how participation preserves Oldtone, “You’ve seen this. Through the pandemic, if there’s a restaurant that somebody really likes or a community, if you’re not there patronizing it, it’s not gonna be there. And if you believe in something, you need to support it. “There’s so many different ways to support things. Like, you could volunteer or, you can buy a ticket. That’s kinda the easiest way. But, I feel like once somebody is involved, they’re involved for a lifetime. And they’re also excited about getting other people involved in it.”
This familial bond and community is an essential part of Roots music in general. According to Trevor, “The music is passed down. A lot of the tunes are passed down, from, you know, the older generation to a younger generation. And there are songs about families, and working and the familiarity of doing the same task. A lot of the songs are about raising a hog and slaughtering a hog. That type of thing.”
The pandemic that shut down most of the music touring and festival circuits in the world, unfortunately caused the demise of the Oldtown Music Festival. After much thought and changing the business to a nonprofit, they are back and better (and bigger) than ever. The lineup now features the grammy-winning winning Los Texmaniacs, as well as many other acts from across the country and beyond.
Trevor explains what’s changed, “We have reorganized as a nonprofit, which is different. That’s made it so the festival could come back through fundraising efforts and stuff like that. We have some more support, in that way. The festival always relied on musicians basically doing us a favor and playing for far less than they normally would play for just because they believed in the festival. Believed in us. So, now we’re at a point where, we can start to pay bands what they deserve, which is nice. Realistically, we’re back to where we were. 2019 was our best year. After that, as you would imagine, things got harder. We were on a roll in 2019. If we can make it back to 2019-type numbers and attendance, we’re doing good. The support is already at those levels, which feels nice. It was nice to bring this back, but we also want to bolster the [involvement] in this area. There’s a large Latinx community and we wanna get those folks more involved in the show.”
When asked how the Oldtone Music Festival was able to return this year, Trevor responded, “It’s on a working farm, and the farmers were supportive of us having it brought back. And the neighbor to the farm is this actor called Walton Goggins. He came to the festival in 2021. We did a one-day one, and he reached out to us and he was like, ‘This is amazing. I want to be a part of this.’ He’s been super helpful in helping us reach out to people that we’ve never been able to contact before and being an advocate for the festival. And also him feeling like he has a place – a calling in the community now. He’s been just an advocate, which feels really nice and supportive.”
Walton Goggins, the Emmy-nominated actor, known for Fallout, and Sons of Anarchy, joined the festival this year as executive producer. But, I was curious about what got Trevor involved in the festival. He said, “So, I’m not a musician. Which I feel like is good in some ways. I can focus on organizing things, and not have to also worry about… the co-organizer is also a musician. and he’s said he’ll never play in the festival again because he’s just too chaotic organizing and doing stuff like that. But I guess where I came to this music was, I was working for my friend’s band and, I really like this music. What were their influences? And then you start going down this, rabbit hole. You start at one point and work your way back to, what was the root? Where where does this music come from? And then you can spur off of that into so many different ways where it’s “oh, wow. I really like this type of string band music.” And, then it’s like, “Now I’m l really interested and excited about Italian string band music.” And you can endlessly just be, discovering new things, and that’s what I like about curating something like Oldtone. The older generation gets inspired by the younger generation and vice versa and all the musicians are there sharing experiences with each other.”
I asked, “Can you see a future of roots music? Not just growing, or, continuing to exist, but, can you see it, evolve into something new? Different? Has it already?”
He responded, “Yeah. I feel like it sort of is evolving, and I feel like there are people out there that have started on the scale of, an Oldtone-type festival. Or, I know people that have played Oldtone before that are now, some of the largest touring acts and, are having crossovers with, Post Malone and people like that. And people, in that pop music world are, like, “What’s the root of this music that I’m making?” And, “How do I learn more about it?” The more industry-driven pop world is almost supporting, in a way, the roots music world just by notoriety. Those people with a bigger audience, [are] bolstering some of the people in this world.” He added, “There are some people who play Oldtone that have their hands in the pop world, they could come and play something like this and feel, more comfortable. It’s fun for them, and they could feel comfortable doing it without having the backlash of, ‘You didn’t play your your hit.’ You know? So it’s really nice for musicians to have an outlet for the things that they enjoy. Music’s funny. You’re always moving forward and backwards at the same time. As a musician, you’re developing your musical tastes all the time.”
What’s Trevor most excited about? He says, “I’m excited just to get it back. And personally, artist-wise, there is a woman from, Montana called Kiki Cavazos who is kind of elusive and really hard to get. And she is coming this year and it was no small task to get her here. They enlisted some buddies from New Orleans to basically go up there and kidnap her from Montana and drive her from Montana to New York. And then she’s going to do a run with her old buddies The Deslondes. That’s what I’m excited about. She played Newport Folk Festival in 2016 or 17 and kind of faded away and had some kids in Montana. And this is her coming out party again.”
Trevor said, “They can expect to have a good time.” He adds that you don’t even have to be a fan of roots music to enjoy yourself, “There’s a lot of volunteers on-site right now that have been here and are the most integral parts of it that are like, “I don’t even like this kind of music. I just like being around these people.” And everyone’s so nice and everyone’s so welcoming. There’s something for everyone. You will have your eyes opened to something special.”
When asked if there was anything else he would like to add, Trevor responded, “Just give a little nod to the weather so it doesn’t rain too much on Saturday.” And in a phrase that encapsulates the entire meaning of Oldtone, he adds, “But that’s no problem with us. We’ll still have fun.”
Day Lot Gate Times:
Thursday: 4 pm -12 am
Friday: 11 am -12 am
Sat: 9 am -12 am
Sun: 10 am – 4 pm
Full Oldtone Music Festival 2024 Lineup:
Los Texmaniacs
Foghorn Stringband
Kiki Cavazos
The Deslondes
Jesse Lége & Bayou Brew
Danny Paisley & Southern Grass
Sweet Megg
JP Harris
Dumpster Debbie
Will Mentor
Jordan Thibodeaux, Joel Savoy & Cedric Watson
Down Hill Strugglers
Rance Chase
Krissie & The Kranks
Chattanooga Dogs
Maura Gahn
Moonshine Holler
The Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee
Wild Leek River
The Talking Hearts
The Neon Moons
Zach Bryson
Beg, Steal or Borrow
Slinky Armadillo
Buy tickets to Oldtone Music Festival and learn more here.
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