Stage 5 (or, originally, "Stage V") is an unofficial stage at the Walnut Valley Festival, an annual bluegrass festival in Winfield, Kansas, United States.
Set up in the Pecan Grove campground, the informal stage began in 1987 when camper Russell Brace and friends built it on the back of a flatbed truck. The stage is so-named because the festival proper has four main stages.
The stage was immediately popular and is now a cherished tradition at the annual event.
Audiences at Stage 5 can usually expect to hear typical acoustic string instruments. However, many musicians, while there, part from traditional bluegrass styles and emphasize a looser, more rock-oriented interpretation of roots music.
Several notables have played Stage 5. Among them: Tommy Emmanuel, The Wilders, Beppe Gambetta, an early incarnation of the Dixie Chicks, and Split Lip Rayfield.
Famous quotes containing the word stage:
“The spectacle of misery grew in its crushing volume. There seemed to be no end to the houses full of hunted starved children. Children with dysentery, children with scurvy, children at every stage of starvation.... We learned to know that the barometer of starvation was the number of children deserted in any community.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)