Happy Valley Jamboree to be held Labor Day Weekend

HAPPY VALLEY, NC (August 14, 2024) ⇒ The Happy Valley Jamboree, a free event, will take place Labor Day weekend on the Jones Family Farm in Happy Valley. The gathering will feature the heritage music of the area and will include performances by local musicians, workshops for and by youths in the Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM) program, children’s activities, and primitive camping beside the beautiful Yadkin River. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own chairs and pop-up canopies will be allowed in designated areas around the stage.

The Jamboree is a new celebration, formed to fill the void left by the Happy Valley Fiddlers Convention, held annually on Labor Day weekends from 2005 to 2023. Fiddlers Conventions, popular for more than one hundred years, are built around separate competitions on a variety of string instruments. With a nod to that model, the Jamboree will have a Convention Memorial Contest on Saturday night beginning at 6:00 PM, where all instrumentalists, singers, and dancers will compete against each other in a single category. Since part of the Jamboree’s mission is to celebrate our region’s rich and diverse musical heritage, contestants are encouraged to perform old-time, bluegrass, piedmont blues, ragtime, and early country music. The Jamboree strives to create a welcoming, supportive, and fun atmosphere for all participants. Contestants may register onsite beginning Friday night. Winners who place first, second, and third will receive prizes of $150, $75, and $50, respectively.

Friday evening will include light-hearted entertainment beginning at 7:00 PM. Events will include multiple cake walks, an open mic, and a joke contest with prizes being awarded for the best and the worst jokes. (In past events, the same joke has been known to win in both categories!) The site of the jamboree includes the grave of Laura Foster, for whom Tom Dooley was hanged for murdering, an event which was made famous worldwide by the Kingston Trio’s version of the song, “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley.” Storyteller Rob McHale will tell the sad tale of the story behind the song.

Saturday events begin at 10:00 AM with a Youth Showcase by regional Junior Appalachian Musicians. JAM programs provide after-school group lessons in traditional music and dance in more than fifty counties throughout southwest Virginia, east Tennessee, and in western North Carolina and South Carolina. Slow jams, where musicians of all ages can learn and practice new tunes, will be held throughout the day. A ballad swap will be led by Donna Rae Norton, an eighth-generation ballad singer from Madison County, and a flat-foot dance workshop will be directed by acclaimed traditional dancer Rodney Sutton, an adjunct professor at East Tennessee State University’s “Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music” program. The inviting Yadkin River presents many opportunities for family fun including fishing, kayaking, tubing and swimming with parental supervision.

A variety of children’s activities will be available throughout Saturday. Guided by volunteers with teaching backgrounds, children may participate in a variety of arts and craft activities including finger weaving and making puppets, masks, shakers, beaded necklaces, and bird-feather bookmarks. The Jamboree will retain one of the most-loved events of the Happy Valley Fiddlers Conventions, the Children’s Parade, featuring a string band, giant puppets, and smaller puppets and musical shakers made in the children’s activities tent.

Sunday will begin with a community gospel sing-along at 10:00 AM. Concert performances will take place from 12:00 to 4:00 PM, starting with entertainment by William Ritter and Sarah Ogletree performing traditional mountain music. They will be followed by Sheila Kay Adams, a seventh-generation ballad singer, storyteller, and banjo player from Madison County, NC. Adams is the recipient of the North Carolina Heritage Award as well as the National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Local favorites, Strictly Clean and Decent, will perform an eclectic mix of traditional and modern folk music and The Harris Brothers will present their unique arrangements of traditional roots music.

The Happy Valley Jamboree has been supported by a small grant from the Happy Valley Fiddlers Convention nonprofit and generous support from area groups and sponsors including Suzanne Williams, Jan and Richard Ritter, and New South Tractor of Newton. Scott Hornbaker has donated a fiddle that will be raffled off in support of the jamboree. The Mary Bernhardt Busko Memorial Fund and the Rotary Club of Caldwell County are sponsors of the youth programming.

The Happy Valley Jamboree will take place on Labor Day Weekend, August 30 through September 1. Located at the Jones Family Farm alongside the Yadkin River, 3590 NC-268, Lenoir, NC, primitive camping is available for $10 per night or $25 for the weekend; campers, motorhomes, tents, and cars are welcome, and campers may set up as early as Thursday. Designated quiet areas will be made available for those with children, as well as for those who prefer to hear music in the daylight hours. Food vendors Blue Moose Coffee, Anna’s Sweet Treats, and Hot Diggity Dog will set up Saturday and Sunday. For more information, follow the Happy Valley Jamboree page on Facebook or visit www.happyvalleyfiddlers.org.

Article and photographs provided by Kay Crouch

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