Nothin' Fancy - Nothin' Fancy Bluegrass Festival

Nothin' Fancy Bluegrass Festival

In 2001, a Rockbridge County entrepreneur, Morris O'Shields, created a bluegrass festival at the Glen Maury Park, the site of the Maury River Fiddler's Convention where Nothin' Fancy won its victory three years before. The festival was named for Nothin' Fancy, who have served as the host act in years since. Just as the band originally named itself after the first music festival in which it competed—subsequently winning the prize—it then had a music festival, whose competition it had also won, subsequently named for it.

The so-named festival has become a much-loved annual event that brings scores of bluegrass fans to the Shenandoah Valley and to the little town of Buena Vista, VA, where Farris calls home (and from which the band operates). Held each year at the Glen Maury Park in Buena Vista, Virginia, the festival has perennially played host to major bluegrass bands. The 2008 festival, for example, included such names as Rhonda Vincent, Michelle Nixon, Blue Mountain Sunrise, The Deer Creek Boys, Randy Waller & the Country Gentlemen, Blue Moon Rising, and the Gary Waldrep Band. It has also hosted bands and artists such as IIIrd Tyme Out, the Lonesome River Band, Missy Raines, Marty Raybon, The Dillards, the Lewis Family, Goldwing Express, Larry Stephenson, Mark Newton, and Charlie Sizemore.