The Richmond Folk Festival was started after the City of Richmond, in collaboration with the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA), hosted the National Folk Festival from 2005 to 2007. Richmond’s spin-off event, overseen by Venture Richmond, has emerged as one of the top-tier folk music festivals in the country, and one of Virginia’s largest most popular annual attractions.

But it takes a village to pull off an event like the Richmond Folk Festival. 

As we celebrate 20 years of Richmond folk, and all the different cultural traditions that it encompasses, Style Weekly asked some key organizers, planners and volunteers how it all began and what has kept it “the best thing Richmond does.” 

Jack Berry

Former CEO Venture Richmond and Programming
Committee Member

It all started with Joel Katz. He attended the National Folk Festival when it was in Bangor, Maine and came back all excited and thought Richmond should bring it here. 

Joel Katz

First-year Programming Committee Chairperson

As the executive director of the Carpenter Center, I had been [booking] performers that the NCTA represented. The organization not only produced the National Folk Festival in cities around the country, they also represented touring performers. [The NCTA’s] Julia Olin and Joe Wilson (1938-2015) were friends of mine. I guess they invited me to one of the Nationals and we started a dialogue about how great it would be for them to work with Richmond which was, at the time, a bit of a dump and getting terrible press. 

We had to put together a proposal, a bid. I don’t know what cities we were competing against, but I convinced [businessman] Jim Ukrop and Jack Berry, who was the director of Richmond Renaissance, to fly up to Bangor, Maine for a day to see the National. So we went up in Ukrop’s plane and spent a day. Jack was just thrilled, he was a big music fan anyway, so when he saw what the National festival looked like in Bangor, he lit up.

Jack Berry

Joel had sold me on the event, for sure. I was impressed by the quality of the performances and the way it was run. It blew us all away. I was convinced that we could get the leadership of the community together and make it successful. I was the head of Richmond Renaissance then. Its mission was to enhance the vitality of downtown Richmond so it was our mission to bring people to the riverfront, and I thought this was the best way to do that I’d ever seen. 

Joel Katz

We put together a coalition of many arts and community organizations to sit around the table and work on a bid. And we had to come up with a lot of money, too. So we invited the organizers in Bangor to come down to Richmond to talk to everyone. And we were successful. But it was a very difficult first six or eight months because no one was in charge. No one was doing anything. And it came to the point where the NCTA said, if you don’t get this together, we’re going to take it somewhere else.

Julia Olin 

Executive Director Emerita, NCTA and Festival Programming Supervisor, 2005-2018

It was a rocky start. The [nonprofits] that applied to host, before we got off the ground, one of the leaders retired and someone new came in, then another left town. So there was a leadership vacuum on the operational side, and nothing happened. And we had given them a lot of time, at least two years. The process of organizing this festival involves getting major community buy-in and sticking to this committee structure. There’s a fundraising committee, an executive committee, steering committee, volunteer committee, programming – all of this infrastructure has to be built to make it successful.

So we kept saying we need to get going on this. And we finally called a meeting of Richmond leadership in late 2004. Now remember, this is less than a year away. We had a list four pages long of things that should’ve already been done.

Lisa Sims 

CEO, Venture Richmond

I was at Richmond Region Tourism when we were bidding on this. I started out as a volunteer marketing committee chair for the festival. There was this one meeting with Richmond Renaissance, Richmond Region Tourism, City Celebrations, all these different nonprofit groups that did things downtown [many would later merge to form Venture Richmond].

It was sort of the NCTA’s come-to-Jesus meeting, saying if you all want this as a community, there has to be one organization that will stand up and take on a million-dollar budget, basically. Everyone kind of looked at each other. And it was Jack Berry who spoke up and said, “I’ll do it.”

Julia Olin

It was a big meeting, maybe 30 people in the room. And there was silence at one point after we’d laid out the list of things that still needed to be done, and Joe Wilson spoke up. “Who’s going to own this thing?” 

If Jack hadn’t stepped up, I don’t know what would’ve happened. He was able to work with civic leaders and keep them involved. Once he came aboard, we were on the phone every day. 

Jack Berry

I remember it like it was yesterday. We had gotten off to a slow start and hadn’t organized anything, or raised any money, and the NCTA was really impatient. I raised my hand and said I’d organize and raise money if everybody helped.

Stephen Lecky

Director of Events, Venture Richmond

I don’t think I had a clear grasp of just how massive an undertaking this festival truly was. I went up to Bangor for the National and to the [spin-off festival in] Lowell, Mass. and that helped to drive home the scope of the event, that this wasn’t just one or two stages with a few thousand people, this was a world-class event coming to Richmond, unlike anything I was prepared for in terms of sheer size. And frankly, it’s still that way. It’s massive in terms of the amount of stages and artists and vendors and volunteers and production needs and the space needed to pull it off.

Dwain Winters

Festival Technical Director, 2005-present

[Quoted in 2013] What does it take to put on the Richmond Folk Fest? Basically, creating everything you would need for a small city of 150-to-200,000 people. There are 130 tents, the smallest being 10-by-10 and the largest 80-by-160. We put up 2.5 miles of fencing. There are 374 tables and 5,493 chairs; we use about a half-mile of electrical cable. We put up 527 signs — half of those need to be made each year. There are 101 porta-johns, two forklifts. Enough food and beverages so the lines aren’t too long. We have a major recycling program … Festivals are 80% logistics and 20% substance. If we do our job well enough, the logistics become almost invisible. 

Joel Katz

At first, people didn’t know what this was. They generally thought of ‘folk’ as Bob Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary and, back then, there really wasn’t this notion of “Americana,” whether old Black blues or [white] guys playing the fiddle. This was learning your trade from those that came before you, not something you were doing because you necessarily wanted a career. You were doing it because it was part of your life. 

Jack Berry

Many of the corporate leaders thought that ‘folk’ implied banjos and quilts. And it did, but that’s certainly not all it did. They didn’t see, at first, that it would have a broad and diverse appeal, so they were really reluctant to fund the thing.

But then we had a fundraiser that Newmarket sponsored at Tredegar, and we brought in that Canadian band, Vishtèn, from Prince Edward Island. This incredible Acadian music with fiddle and mandolin, and it just blew the people away. And the corporate sponsors that we were wooing realized that we were talking about something bigger than [what you’d find in] Southwest Virginia, that we were talking about traditional roots music from cultures around the world. And I think that’s what helped get us rolling with the corporate sponsorships. [Vishtèn would later return to play the 2007 and 2018 festivals.]

Josh Kohn

NCTA Programming Manager, 2007-2011

It was a bit of a trainwreck getting the first festival set up. A lot of rain came on Friday. I was stage managing on Brown’s Island and that festival kickoff was extremely wet. I mean, just getting the systems in place was a nightmare. I have strong memories of Ralph Stanley playing at the festival, on a rental stage on the far end of the field. It was so wet and muddy but he was in great spirits.

We joked later that it was good that we had rain that first day because it didn’t give us the throngs of people who would see how not quite ready the festival really was. By that Sunday, when the weather was really beautiful, things were finally in place. It was massive. And we said to each other, this could work.  

Jack Berry

I remember sitting in the tent on opening night and it was raining sideways and, I counted ‘em, there were only 75 people there. I was thinking about all of the money that had been raised and all of the effort that went into it, and we were facing a disaster. We were expecting 100,000 and here’s 75 people. But the crowds came out the next day and everybody quickly learned that the show goes on, rain or shine. And people have adapted to it now, they know how to deal with it. But that first night was scary. 

Jamie Thomas 

Volunteer Coordinator, 2011-present

I’m always impressed by those who come out in the rainstorms. I feel like the performers give that much more when they see a crowd standing in the rain.

Lisa Sims

I think the thing that was crucial [early on] was Richmond Region 2007, the 400th anniversary commemoration. And Wilson Flohr was heading that up, and he was looking for legacy projects that would stand the test of time. They identified the National Folk Festival, so for the first three years they committed $500,000 a year to the festival.

Now if you look at what we raise from sponsors, it’s maybe $800 to $850,000 dollars. When I tell other communities that, they say, “Oh thanks a lot, we have nothing like that.” [Laughs]. So that was key.

Joel Katz

The key was money. We came up with the money and basically handed it over to the NCTA, who had been doing this for many years. They had a formula, they had the equipment, the personnel. And, in partnership with the community, the thing would be planned out and implemented. And that was the case. They came, they looked at the site, they brought their experts, brought all their stuff, and tried to train people to do something that’s supposed to last forever. 

Mavis Wynn

Events Operations Manager, Venture Richmond and Programming Committee Member

We were learning. I will be the first to admit that the first year the food wasn’t up to standard. I leaned heavily on choosing food vendors I was familiar with that could handle a large crowd, and the rest I pulled from vendors on the National Folk Festival circuit. I needed to fill space. But in the second year, I started looking closely at other events here in the region, the type of vendors they had. And I asked people for suggestions. For instance, La Milpa, on Southside, came from the suggestion of Wilson Flohr because he loved their tongue tacos. I asked the owners, “Do you do events?” And they said, “We can give it a try” and they’ve been with us ever since. 

Wilson Flohr

Former President and CEO, Richmond Region 2007

Why did we support it? It was a well-run, documented event held in communities across the country, well-organized and fun. Plus it was to be housed on the banks of the James River, just the kind of thing we were looking to promote with Richmond Region 2007. That group’s focus was to support events along the James, sort of highlighting the journey that Christopher Newport took from Richmond to Jamestown 400 years before, a free event that would hopefully put Richmond on the map as far as tourism goes. 

Jon Lohman 

Curator, Virginia Folklife Area and Programming Committee Member, 2005-present

At the time, the question was: ‘Are we going to be able to get folks from [Henrico County’s] West End to come together down on Brown’s Island?’ It’s crazy to think that now because [downtown festivals] happen all the time. But at that time, the city didn’t have nearly as many outdoor events. Some viewed the festival as akin to the circus coming to town, a here-today, gone-tomorrow experience. 

Raymond Williams

Programming Committee Chairman, 2018-2022

Richmond has always been a music city. Growing up in the East End, there were always bands playing somewhere, in every neighborhood. Friday Cheers has done very well, the music at Innsbrook did well, so when the National Folk Festival came in and did the original [three years], with all of the diversity of music, I think Richmond was ready. We were the perfect city for it. 

Joel Katz

For the first programming committee, I picked a lot of friends and people in the local music business who knew what they were talking about. And then they picked people. Page Wilson, who had a late-night radio show on public radio, was a wealth of knowledge, [musician and former Style Weekly publisher] Jim Wark was a wealth of knowledge, Tim Timberlake was involved, Gregg Kimball from the Library of Virginia, a tremendous talent, knew the old-timey scene better than anyone, Janine Bell [of Elegba Folklore Society] …

Stephen Lecky

I remember, for the programming committee, we wanted a diverse group of people who weren’t necessarily all musicians. We wanted people who had knowledge of various genres. We were certainly mindful of having representation of various cultures and people – male, female, Black and white and everything in between – to sort of guide the discussions on what to bring here, as opposed to just having 30 dudes who know blues or bluegrass music. We’ve been told by the NCTA that Richmond’s is one of the more vocal, opinionated and knowledgeable programming committees they’ve worked with. Certainly, they bring us great options. But we are, in return, bringing them great options and suggestions to discuss. 

Josh Kohn

Richmond’s programming committee was solid from the start. They were always, and still are, the most engaged, the most involved and the most willing to call out something that they don’t like … to the point where it was often very stressful to be involved in those meetings. But it was fun. In most host communities, the programming committee would vote on your suggestions but were not willing to call you out. The Richmond committee made my music knowledge much deeper because I knew that anytime I would talk about an artist, I would have to know both the history of that artist, but also the entirety of other artists within that tradition or connected traditions. At any point, someone would say “what about?” That was an ongoing joke, someone on the Richmond committee would always say, ‘Well, what about …?’

Tim Timberlake 

Artist Host Coordinator and Programming Committee Chairperson, 2005-present

I don’t think there’s one thing that has made Richmond so successful. But [the NCTA program managers] are the curators of many artists they bring and submit to our panel. We’re free to suggest people as well. But they know of people we don’t and how to negotiate and deal with visas and travel issues. Our partnership with NCTA, which we’ve kept, has been really strong.

Todd Ranson

Artist Host and Programming Committee Member, 2005-present

One standout feature over the years has been the Virginia Folklife Area. Jon Lohman, who programs that stage each year, is a Virginia treasure, shining a spotlight on regional traditions and performers, many of which have gone on to perform on the main stage. If that area isn’t the heart of the festival, it’s certainly the liver or some other vital organ. 

Gregg Kimball

Programming Committee Member, 2005-present

We followed the National’s model of conducting workshops that put the different artists together to talk about and explore things like where the music came from, what cultures produced it, how it evolved over time. Those can be the hidden gems of the festival. You actually get to hear from the artist about what the music means to them and that personal part of it is really compelling. One thing I’ve always noticed is how much the artists appreciate each other, and that translates to the audience. It’s a special thing for them. 

Blaine Waide

Almost every National I’ve done has a school outreach component so it’s a key part of the festival’s community engagement, rooting the festival in the community and going into the public schools and giving kids exposure to artists from such a rich eclectic mix of social backgrounds. Unfortunately, these days music programs in schools have been cut back, so to be able to give these kids those experiences is really important. And the shows the artists do at schools, which has been done since the first year, are really special to them, too. They leave the hotels at 7:30 in the morning, tired with coffee in hand, and they come back from a school show energized by the joy the kids bring to the experience. And you can see that energy. It’s written all over them. 

Jim Bland

Manager of Festival Merchandising and Programming Committee Member, 2005-present

My most memorable time was the deluge the first year. It rained and rained. Sometimes we would be at a performance where we were outnumbered by the band. And there were memorable groups that I have seen over the years, and people we didn’t promote as headliners, like Roseanne Cash, who attracted a vast sea of people. It’s great to see people from all walks of life, from all ethnicities, experience the music. They are hearing something they have never heard before, whether it is throat singers from Tuva or Algerian players doing a weird dance.

There have been some fun after-parties where the bands interact, admiring each other and playing together. They aren’t tied to their own traditions. A Cajun band might start playing a tune and then the African drummers join in and soon everyone is going crazy, dancing or playing along.

Todd Ranson

The Saturday night afterparties at the hotel should be mentioned. … It’s the mega workshop and jam session that we wish we could have on the stages of the festival in the daytime, where musicians from all over the globe get together and just start jamming together and it’s mind-blowing. And that’s what we all want – everyone coming together. The late Jim Wark used to be the stage manager for those parties and they’ve got Jared Pool in there now after things were tamped down because of COVID. 

Josh Kohn

That first year of the Richmond festival, 2008, was when we could start bringing artists from outside the country. The National always focuses on traditions based in the United States, or Canada, or traditions that cross the border but the partner festivals, like Richmond, are able to program more expansively. 

Lisa Sims

One crucial moment came in 2007 when we said goodbye to the National. We always planned this to be a legacy event, a community-building apparatus and cultural event. But 2008, as you remember, was when the financial situation fell out. So we were concerned.

We got all our sponsors in a room and asked: “Do you think we can do this?” We didn’t want it to be less than, it needed to be as good as the National. To a person, everybody in that room said they were in. And it was harder at that time for the banks, but we were able to cobble together enough. But there was a time where we weren’t sure it would happen.

Blaine Waide

Executive Director, NCTA and Programming Manager, 2014-present

It’s expected that the host community will create a locally produced festival after the National leaves after three years. For the Richmond Folk Festival, the NCTA still does the programming, hires most of the production crew, meets with the local programming committee three times a year getting feedback. It’s largely the same relationship as it was when it was the National, but as a local event, [the RFF] is very much grounded in the local community. It’s also the festival that still looks like a National Folk Festival, in size, scale and scope

Gregg Kimball

I knew a little bit about the National Folk Festival history and that there were some [spinoff festivals], like the one in Lowell, Massachusetts, that have lasted for a long time, and then others that just kind of petered out after a couple of years, like Bangor, Maine. I do think that Richmond was an untapped audience that was ready for it. You could see that in the acts that would come to Richmond, that there was an interest in traditional music. Also, geographically, we’re in a good position for a festival like this, and you couldn’t ask for a better venue. That riverfront was so underutilized for so long. 

These festivals do work well in mid-sized cities. I know Nashville didn’t really work out for the National and I’m not really surprised by that. There’s a lot of competition there. I think mid-sized cities, and Lowell is like this, they appreciate it in a way that maybe a bigger city doesn’t. 

Stephen Lecky

It’s a $1.5 million budget every year and we lose money most of the time. It’s not a money-making event for anybody, but it succeeds in Venture Richmond’s goal of getting people to come to downtown Richmond. We get to show off the riverfront and the downtown area in a way that you can’t do just by [promoting] restaurants. We get people from the counties or from out of state who may never have had the need to come to downtown Richmond.

Julia Olin

When the National festival is over, it’s entirely up to the community if they want to invite [the NCTA] to stay and help them plan their own local festival. I think year three in Richmond may have been one of the highest attendances to that date for a National. 

Lisa Sims, at that time, was festival director. She and Jack just said they wanted to keep doing what we’d been doing. I just remember people being so happy that it was the Richmond festival and it was going to keep going. The [festival] to me, has always had a cool style to it and a real devotion to it. I personally adore everybody in Richmond that is involved. Everybody is always thinking and has good ideas, the leadership involved with the festival is always trying to think of something special to do. …

Jim Wark (1959-2020)

Former Artist Host, Programming Committee Chair, 2006-2014

[Quoted in 2019] In the early days of the festival there was some criticism about all these ethnically diverse artists playing for a white, funnel-cake eating audience. Now all the other aspects have caught up to the diversity of the music. There are more folklife traditions in the shops, more international foods, more dance. The music selection was always very diverse.

We’ve subtly tried to address some of the divisiveness of modern America. We’ve booked the Tuvan throat singers from Russia, and the Aleppo Ensemble, a Sufi dance and music group from Syria. We are trying to present the human side of the places we hear more about in the news. 

Stephen Lecky

It’s 100% accurate that the first few years it was basically older white people in attendance. And I think that goes back to the word, ‘folk’ again. I feel like people just made assumptions that it was going to be singer-songwriters and bluegrass music. So we did some intentional things in terms of what kind of acts we would program to reach specific audiences, and go-go is a good example of that because of its ties to DC. And we made an effort to reach out to churches, and to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the Asian community. We look for diversity both in terms of attendees and volunteers, and as years have gone on, it has become a bit of a melting pot in terms of age and gender and racial ethnicity. 

Sharon Bassard

Festival Manager, Venture Richmond and Programming Committee
Member, 2008-present

We really didn’t know what to expect [those first years]. The challenge was that it was new and the name folk had connotations of banjos and quilts, but we just had to get educated in what folk means. I look forward to our programming committee meetings because I’m always learning. I know music that I like, but it’s also wonderful to hear music from different countries and areas I’ve never heard. The banter can be quite comical sometimes but very, very informative. 

Charles “Graybeard”
Williams

Artist Host and Programming Committee Member, 2014-present

When I was first asked to be on the committee, I thought it was cool that they were taking suggestions. So I would suggest some of the acts that I would play on my radio show [“The Other Black Music” on WRIR]. And some of those performers did eventually come to the festival, like Tribu Baharu [from Colombia], and L’Orchestre Afrisa International [from the Congo]. The NCTA does a great job of bringing us suggestions and also does a good job of listening to us. 

Julia Olin

There seemed to be a feeling that this event could be a way to create something that everybody would come to, so there wasn’t this separation of, you know, African American events and white events. Can this be the thing that brings everyone together? Mavis Wynn was on the programming committee and I asked her, what kind of music would people like? And Mavis was like, “go-go.”

And so, I think Richmond was the first to bring go-go [to a folk festival]. And interestingly enough, at the time, Chuck Brown had just won a National Heritage Fellowship and that meant that there was federal recognition of go-go. So Chuck was there the second year of the National and then [the NCTA] took go-go music everywhere after that. 

Mavis Wynn

I was in charge of the food vendors and joined the programming committee the second year. I felt that there was a lack of diversity in that first year and remember sitting in the meeting, and people talking about the types of music that would be appropriate, and I raised my hand. I told them that there was one genre of music we should program because of its roots in Virginia/D.C./Maryland … and then I told them that if we were to book Chuck Brown, we would get a diverse audience. And that’s when we started booking go-go. And it became a festival tradition. 

Don Harrison

Programming Committee Member, 2006-present

The Richmond Folk Festival has helped to broaden and expand the term ‘folk’ to include many different genres. [Before us] the NCTA wasn’t programming beatboxers, or Gary US Bonds, or funk music, these are things that Richmond helped to introduce. Go-go groups were not at folk festivals before us. It wasn’t considered a part of the canon, but now it is. The go-go group EU now go and play other folk festival locations like Butte, Montana.

Josh Kohn

Richmond put go-go on the [folk] map, absolutely. And hip-hop, too. That third year, we had the Wild Style breakdancing show. Even within traditions, we had explorations of Virginia rockabilly, and stuff like Swamp Dogg and Gary US Bonds’ “Norfolk Sound” and other people putting their stamp on soul music.

There was so much good stuff. The year [2010] where we had Zakir Hussein on Friday night and then Ensemble Shanbehzadeh, a Persian bagpipe [group] – I loved that one-two bill. It felt like every person of Indian descent in the Richmond area came to that show. 

Zarina Fazaldin

Artist Host and Programming Committee Chairperson, 2023-present

I came from a background in Tanzania that was multicultural, with lots of Europeans, Arabs, Indians and, of course, Africans. I was brought up in that environment and now, with the Richmond Folk Festival, I’m able to see all of that in three days. It’s one reason I’ve volunteered for 20 years with the festival. It’s helping to keep all of these traditions alive. 

Gregg Kimball

Our programming committee is pretty darn active and willing to engage in that conversation about ‘what is folk’? And we’ve disagreed on things but, generally speaking, I think we have come to a much more robust view of what folk music is and it’s absolutely justified. We struggled in the early years with the terminology, and we made a real effort to educate people on what we’re talking about here. Most of us on the committee look at this as music that is indigenous to a community, it’s that simple. And if it is a community-created music that is defined as a true cultural expression of that community, it’s folk music. That is our North Star and it’s served us really well, and we’ve been able to explain to people why we’ve presented, say, hip-hop and go-go. 

Andy McGraw

Director, Prison Outreach and Programming Committee Member, 2014-present

What happens when you have all of these stages set up the way they are, the people inevitably intersect with other kinds of people, almost by accident? You walk into a tent and it’s some ethnic group or some music you have never heard before. I remember sitting in the crowd for the Zhou Family Band [in 2018], the Chinese band with traditional instruments, and they had a lot of comedic elements in their show. The guy sitting to my right was an older, heavy-set Black man and he turned to me and said, “I have no idea what’s going on, but this has got an incredible groove.” And it was exactly how I felt. That was a social thing that was made possible because of this music that neither of us knew anything about. 

Rumy Mohta

Artist Host and Programming Committee Member, 2010-present

Richmond is slowly changing. It is still changing. It is now a tapestry of different mosaics put together from around the world, people from different places. We also have people from the younger generation coming in from other states or upstate. What I mean to say is that they have all been exposed to different cultures, and when we are plugging in these new artists from around the world, the crowd is appreciating it a lot more. 

When I first heard Son Rompe Pera [in 2022], for instance, I didn’t know what they were about but from the first beat of the drums, I knew I would love that group. And so did everyone else. I remember that there was this older white guy in the front, and he was dancing more fervently than anyone in the crowd. He probably didn’t understand Spanish but it didn’t matter. He was really into it. See, we bring in performers that can be enjoyed by any age group, every gender and by every race. 

Raymond Williams

As it went along, we started adding different types of music, and catering to different ethnicities. We try to cover a lot but every year you don’t get the same thing, you’ll get something like it. The important thing is that there is diversity in the groups, from Latino to reggae to African bands, to some of the old R&B bands, and go-go. Everyone on the programming committee is after that diversity because Richmond itself is a diverse city. 

Tim Timberlake

I don’t think there’s much argument that it’s the most culturally important weekend in the city. It took a long time for people to recognize what folk music is, indigenous music. … Now after all these years, it’s a joy to see that the vision has been realized. Folk music is the music of the people. Now the audiences in Richmond finally reflect the artists onstage.

Mavis Wynn

Over time, people just started getting it. Having the names like Chuck Brown and Rare Essence and Original P and Grandmaster Flash, it solidified the fact that, hey, they aren’t just doing bluegrass and quilts down there. As a programming committee, I think we’ve done a heckuva job in making sure we cover everything.

Blaine Waide

When you put together a schedule, you want to make sure you have the right balance, but it can’t be diversity for diversity’s sake. There has to be diversity based on cultural background, gender balance and regional diversity. You can’t just have big dance bands, and we have a programming committee – without someone providing a little corrective nudge (laughs) – that would probably veer in that direction. But you want different kinds of artists who can perform on different kinds of stages, knowing that there are different audiences to be mindful of. 

For instance, our biggest seller of merchandise every year [at the Plan 9 merchandise tent], almost without fail, is an artist performing Celtic or Irish Music. But for a long time, we didn’t have somebody on the committee with a main interest in Irish or Celtic. As the programmers, we have to be mindful of that and find who else in the community we can reach out to. We have to know what the strengths of the committee are. And Irish or Celtic is there every year. 

Jim Wark

[Quoted in 2019] My most memorable time: I was pressed into service as a musician for Jason D. Williams [in 2016]. At the last minute, his guitar player got sick. He asked the festival organizers if there was anyone in town who could play a rockabilly show without rehearsal. It was two 45-minute sets of stream-of-consciousness rockabilly, riding the roller coaster without a safety bar. After all these years putting the festival together, I finally played it.

Charles “Graybeard” Williams

I love it when we bring in the local groups and they get the chance to shine, like Plunky and Oneness [in 2019]. I often wonder if Richmond knows how big and well-traveled that band is, and then they finally got the chance to show what they could do. I understand the hesitation sometimes to bring in local performers, but we have to remember that, while, say, Bio Ritmo is known to all of us music fans, a good chunk of Richmond has still never seen them. 

Zarina Fazaldin

I’m a big supporter of us recognizing our own local performers. I want us to give the opportunity to at least one local act each year. It took us a long time to recognize someone like Plunky, who is big in France and many other places. If we have the choice of a good local band, and they fit the criteria, I always want to consider them.

Joel Katz

There was always the question of getting local artists involved. It wasn’t supposed to be that kind of festival, it wasn’t designed to spotlight our own talent, but we were insistent and got some quasi-locals on the bill, even in that first year; people from the Crooked Road region, Wayne Henderson and Ralph Stanley and Cephas and Wiggins.

Blaine Waide

The story I’ve heard a number of times is that there was a very clear and conscious conversation the committee had about what to do when it became the Richmond Folk Festival. The question was whether to continue in the vein of the National or to do something more about local artists, and the consensus, after a long and healthy discussion, was to continue with what the National had been about. 

Stephen Lecky 

For me, the most challenging thing is making sure we have enough room for everybody which each year involves rearranging the site and traffic flow. We couldn’t be more thankful to Newmarket, who owns most of the land and who has been a great partner in letting us use fields and parking lots over the last 20 years. But I can’t recall a year when the site and the signage remained identical to the previous year. No more so than this year, 2024, with the construction of the [Riverfront] Amphitheater and the construction of CoStar. There’s going to be construction of the riverfront for years to come. But that’s one of the challenges – where do we put stuff? That and keeping the volunteer level high, which has gotten more challenging in recent years.

Julia Olin

When the Richmond festival started, the local perspective, among the leaders, was, “we’ll do this one year and see how it goes” and then the next year, “we’ll do one more and we’ll see how it goes” and then the next, “OK, one more year and we’ll see.” Until, finally it was, “I guess we’re producing the festival every year.” The corporate sponsors stuck with it. When one sponsor went away, another seemed to pop up. 

Stephen Lecky

When we had to stop for COVID [in 2020], we started focusing on things we could do, both virtually and in-person. And we had a pretty robust list of activities that year. We worked with Kevin Orlosky, who was then with Art on Wheels, and he did an arts installation on the island using river rocks, and we also set up a scavenger hunt along the river with Richmond trivia so folks could come, on their own, and walk the riverfront and do this hunt. We also worked with VPM to create a program that was shown on the typical Folk Fest weekend so that people could have the festival at home.

Blaine Waide

It would be hard to top the 2022 festival and what that year meant to people. It felt like, for the first time, people were ready to come out after COVID. And we were coming off a hurricane that happened the week before, which impacted the 2nd Street Festival. That and we also got recognized as “Richmonders of the Year” by Style Weekly that year. The festival found itself in a really good place coming out of COVID.

It’s all about a sense of ownership and buy-in, and the pride that Richmond has in this festival is on display every year. And that’s what stands out, how proud people in Richmond are of what, in a grassroots, bottom-up way, people have created in the last 20 years. 

Lisa Sims

Going virtual in 2020 was obviously not the same as having the festival on site, but we were able to reach a lot of people on the livestream and the television show. Seeing these performers performing this music in their homes, or out on the plains, was pretty moving. It wasn’t the same as having it in-person, but it was still a beautiful event. We struggled with 2021 whether or not we were going to do it in-person, but things started opening up a little more, and restrictions were being lifted and we decided to proceed, and it was a wonderful year. It was smaller but we still had a great crowd of people and folks were thrilled to be there. 

Otto Konrad

Director, Stage Askers and Programming Committee Chairperson, 2015-2017

I feel like what we do, and what we’ve been doing, is so embedded at this point that we were able to pick it up pretty seamlessly again, without a whole lot of hiccups. I know we were out a stage or two and sponsors come and go, but 2021 felt like a typical Richmond Folk Festival with an incredibly diverse array of music, much of which even surprised me being on the programming committee. The folk festival truly is a music festival that is meant to be a big surprise: the sound of surprise.

Zarina Fazaldin

It rained a bit in 2021, which kept down attendance, but we came back strong in 2022 [a record-breaking year]. People missed the Folk Festival. I feel like we’ve created a sense of unity and togetherness. The festival gives the opportunity for family and friends and neighbors to come out and share and to see the different traditions that are alive and relevant. Otherwise, where would you have the opportunity to see them? 

Stephen Lecky

It’s changed so much from just a three-day festival. We have an official artist, a reveal party, our own beer, our own fundraising dinner that gets 500 people and has been called one of the best food events in the city [RVAFeast], school shows, shows at jails for inmates, our own CD and vinyl. It’s just amazing how much the scope has changed. 

Otto Konrad

We’ve been doing this long enough that we are starting to lose people. It’s a group of people who come back every year and volunteer over and over, and it’s getting to the point where some of us are getting on in age, and some are passing on. I didn’t know him but Gary Gerloff, who died in 2009, was a beloved early figure on the programming committee –we named a path for him at the festival. And we lost Jim Wark a few years ago. 

For this festival to continue another 20 years, we have to completely regenerate the volunteers at all levels. We have to find young people to come in who are passionate about this and can take it on. We’ve got to groom, develop and make room for them to assume leadership if this thing is going to survive.

Jon Lohman

At the National, the traditional Folklife area has a bit of autonomy because the local Folklife program, or whatever the equivalent of that is in that particular state, are the ones who put that together. [When he began, Lohman was Virginia’s state folklorist at Virginia Humanities]

I had been to Lowell and Bangor and I had seen the model for what the local folklife aspect was and, until Richmond, that area wasn’t really much of a performance area. It was the material culture part of the festival with traditional crafts, and there was a theme and it was focused regionally. So when I was thinking of what would be good to feature that first year, I came up with a theme that involved the instrument makers of Virginia, because Virginia is loaded in that area. Luthiers in Southwest Virginia, a Trinidadian steel drum maker in Virginia Beach, Irish flute makers … I knew we could have a program that was really diverse.

But when I envisioned all of this, I thought that it would be crazy to bring Wayne Henderson and Spencer Strickland, and all of these masters, and not have them play their instruments. I mean, these are great musicians, too. So I envisioned a site where the instrument makers were in a horseshoe configuration and there would be a stage in the middle of it. I was told, ‘We don’t have a stage in the Folklife area’ and I argued for it. 

Josh Kohn

Jon has created a culture around the Virginia Folklife area. He’s programmed it every year but one and would bring back things each year, like the oyster shucking contest, or the Paschall Brothers, or the Ingrammettes closing out the stage on Sunday. He decided, in his own curatorial expertise, that they were appropriate to bring back to the festival and help to shape this Virginia identity. He’s put his stamp on it. Now all of the Folklife areas have stages, and for any new city that wants to host the National, or produce their own festival after the National leaves, the model that Virginia Folklife created is now the standard. 

Stephen Lecky

We made an effort from the beginning to drive home that we don’t have headliners, so it was odd to have someone like Rosanne Cash. We’ve had a few of those stars over the years – Mavis Staples, Ralph Stanley, Grandmaster Flash, Maceo Parker. The festival bills itself as having the best acts you’ve never heard of. But we get lucky every few years, the stars align, the budget aligns, the touring routing aligns. But a big name is certainly not something the programming committee is seeking out every year.

Andy McGraw

I knew that the festival did the school programs and there were a lot of people talking at the time about the school-to-prison pipeline. I thought, if you are going to have the Folk Festival artists in the schools, we should have them in the prisons. I was already in the Richmond City Justice Center every week, working with residents as part of a music program I started. At the time, it was Sheriff Woody in charge, and he was promoting a lot of [rehabilitation] programs. 

And it’s been a big success. Every time we bring an artist into the prison is a totally transformative experience for the residents and for the performers. It’s a powerful thing. Last year, [blues guitarist] Melody Angel performed at the State Farm and sang a song about Black men being in prison and their children being raised by single mothers and guys were doing their best not to bawl outright in front of each other. 

Mavis Wynn

Without the volunteers, we could not do this. From being beer pourers to music loggers to artist hosts, to assisting with shows in the city schools and jails, to the programming committee, they all do a heavy lift. And I appreciate Jamie Thomas and his time for coordinating all of those volunteers. I can’t imagine what he goes through to make sure that there’s a person at each of these positions at certain times. But the volunteers come through.

Jamie Thomas

With 1,000 volunteers, sheer numbers make it happen … We have close to two dozen people who this is their 20th consecutive year volunteering with the festival. A lot of them volunteer multiple days, starting a week before and running a week after the festival.

There’s everything from sociable jobs to hard construction jobs, from bucket collections to logging music. Now we’ve got second generations of volunteers. People find their niche if they come more than one year. We always need more people for the bucket brigade. 

Lisa Sims

I can assure you there was no one in that original [meeting] room that thought it would resonate with the community this much. People had high hopes, but we could never have anticipated how much the community would love it.

I heard someone say once, “Even babies don’t cry at the folk festival.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This feature will be among those available in our “All Things Folk” commemorative print magazine, which will be for sale at the Folk Festival ($20). It’s a limited run, so pick up yours before they sell out.