Travis Book has transformed the land next to Devils Backbone Brewing Company at the base of Wintergreen Resort. What was once a farm and later a nursery is now a fertile playground for outdoorsmen and women—home to four miles of hiking and biking trails and well-kempt campgrounds.
What’s remarkable about the transformation is it is almost completely Book’s own doing. For the past three years, he’s worked around his day job to maintain the land with his bare hands, and he’s done it nearly free of charge.
“I spend all my time cooped up in a van or in hotel rooms,” Book said. “When I get home, I just want to be outside and running the chainsaw or weed eater. It feeds my soul.”
Oh, about that day job. When he’s not firing up the hedge clippers, Book plays upright bass for jamgrass favorite The Infamous Stringdusters.
So how does a rising star in the music biz find himself working as a groundskeeper? The answer is entwined in The Festy Experience, the four-day music, camping, and lifestyle festival that’s expected to draw around 3,500 attendees to Nelson County beginning on October 10.
When the opportunity to co-found a music festival with two partners came to the Stringdusters in 2010, the band jumped at the chance. The founders decided on the space adjacent to Devils Backbone as the venue, and when a house on the property came up vacant in 2011, Book moved in.
He’s since come to see The Festy Experience as “a great excuse to open those woods up and make them accessible and campable,” and the festival itself has grown into a three-day escape, offering drifters and wannabes alike the opportunity to shake off the manacles of every day and breathe in freedom for one weekend under a fall Virginia sun.
“For us, it is a comprehensive gathering of people that are like-minded, that enjoy the outdoors, enjoy live music, and just enjoy this sense of fellowship,” said Justin Billcheck, one of the event’s co-founders and current operations manager. “We’ve always been more about the overall experience. We use music to bring people together.”
It’s a model that isn’t entirely unique on the modern festival circuit. From Festy neighbor Lockn’ to the behemoth Coachella in California, most festivals these days look to offer more than just bands on a stage. You can’t stumble about any festival grounds anymore without running into a yoga workshop, interactive music tent, or locally sourced, GMO-free grub.
Still, Billcheck said Festy manages to find its niche among the masses by straddling the line between big and small.
“Really what The Festy embodies is the opportunity to attend a smaller scale festival that’s presented at a very high level,” he said. “It’s not an unorganized mess where your experience gets compromised.”
Book agreed, saying the ability of the festival to schedule national-caliber acts and provide the infrastructure to make everything run smoothly is what makes it attractive not only to the headlining Stringdusters and other bands, but to their fans.
“It feels like a major festival, but you’re not dealing with 50,000 other people,” Book said. “Everything is relatively close. Everything is small.”
The Festy Experience also gets around to staging a nice lineup of bands. When Billcheck, the ’dusters, and third partner Michael Allenby booked Lake Street Dive in 2012, almost no one in the area had heard of them. Now they’re selling out every show they play.
This year, Book expects folk band the Shook Twins and U.K.-based jazz outfit The New Mastersounds to be the up-and-comers to start gaining momentum after The Festy. The lineup also features a number of local and national favorites, on top of two full sets by the Stringdusters and a set each for the band’s numerous side projects. Love Canon will take the crowd back to the ’80s Americana-style during happy hour on Friday, Phil Lesh and Friends contributor Anders Osborne promises to provide the psychedelic songwriter vibe Saturday evening, and Marc Broussard stands to get things moving later that night.
“This is the funk, the super funk from Richmond, Virginia,” Broussard said. “I like playing festivals because we’re going to play to some people that have never heard of us, and we do well with those people. It’s the ones that are huge fans that are continually disappointed.”
Book said The Festy team aims to set a lineup that celebrates all forms of American music, from string band, to rock, blues, jazz, and folk. Keller Williams, who’s at home in any one of those genres, will take the stage with More Than a Little on Friday night for a “dance funky freekfest (sic).”
Williams is a veteran of The Festy Experience. As a musician who’s organized his entire career around outdoor weekend gigs, he said the event in Charlottesville’s backyard is his festival ideal.
“I think people yearn for the smaller fests,” Williams said. “It’s a different kind of mentality living on top of everyone and being with everyone—it’s not for the faint of heart. There are certain ways to go about putting on a festival and being a festivarian, and it’s a great time to be doing it right now.”