Del McCoury is the most awarded artist in bluegrass history. His band, the Del McCoury Band, is headlining the Doc and Rosa Lee Watson MusicFest ‘N Sugar Grove.
On Monday Aug. 18, 1997, Dan Isaacs, Lou Hodges, Joyt Combs, and Jim Hodges tune their instruments before going onstage at the Doc Watson Musicfest.
Doc Watson and his wife, Rosa Lee, talk with fans during the second annual Doc Watson Appreciation Day held at the historic Cove Creek High School in 1999.
Del McCoury is the most awarded artist in bluegrass history. His band, the Del McCoury Band, is headlining the Doc and Rosa Lee Watson MusicFest ‘N Sugar Grove.
On Monday Aug. 18, 1997, Dan Isaacs, Lou Hodges, Joyt Combs, and Jim Hodges tune their instruments before going onstage at the Doc Watson Musicfest.
Doc Watson and his wife, Rosa Lee, talk with fans during the second annual Doc Watson Appreciation Day held at the historic Cove Creek High School in 1999.
For almost two decades, the Doc and Rosa Lee Watson MusicFest ‘n Sugar Grove is where the legendary mountain musician and hometown hero Doc Watson could unwind while playing live music.
Even though Doc was more famous for his connection to the very large MerleFest music festival that took place 40 miles away in North Wilkesboro, MusicFest was where the Watson family could relax and perform for local folks and family as well as others who took the time to drive up into the mountains that the Watsons grew up in and loved.
Doc Watson and his wife Rosa Lee lived in Deep Gap, which is right next door to Boone, and that is where they raised their daughter, Nancy and son, Merle. As Doc’s music career grew in the 1960s, his son Merle eventually joined him on the road and in the recording studio, having learned how to play the guitar and banjo while his father was touring.
In 1985, however, Merle Watson died in a tractor accident. Friends of the Watsons in the music world agreed to come to North Wilkesboro in 1988 to play a tribute concert to their late friend and guitar picker Merle Watson that would later become the yearly festival called MerleFest.
MerleFest grew exponentially over the years, however, going from a stage built on a flatbed truck to 14 stages erected around the grounds of Wilkes Community College. Soon, MerleFest was bringing in upwards of 80,000 attendants and volunteers to the festival over a four-day weekend. Watson loved the event, appreciated it being dedicated to his late son Merle, and was happy that it hired musical acts based on his open-minded “traditional-plus” view of music.
Leading up to Watson’s death in 2012 at 89 years of age, however, performing multiple times a day for four days straight became tiring at times for Watson at the hectic MerleFest, which still thrives today every April.
The Doc and Rosa Lee Watson MusicFest ‘n Sugar Grove, however, which began right after the start of the 21st century, became known as “Doc’s other festival.” It was a much-smaller event where Doc could take a deep breath and let his famous Watson hair down, so to speak. Taking place at the famous Cove Creek School located eight miles away from where Doc’s bronze bench statue sits in downtown Boone, the family-friendly, no alcohol, non-camping festival is where Doc could play with or simply sit and listen to musicians that he loved while experiencing top national acts as well.
After both Doc and Rosa Lee Watson passed away in 2012, MusicFest ‘N Sugar Grove kept going until the festival had to be stopped due to the much-needed repairs that had to be done to Cove Creek School. After the work was completed, thoughts of reviving the festival were then thwarted by the recent Covid pandemic.
Now, however, on July 16, the Doc and Rosa Lee Watson MusicFest ‘N Sugar Grove finally returns to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
At the beautiful Cove Creek School, located at 207 Dale Adams Road in Sugar Grove, the Doc and Rosa Lee Watson MusicFest ‘n Sugar Grove returns with a lineup of live music acts worthy of a 20-year celebration.
Hosted by the Cove Creek Preservation and Development organization, the roster will include living legend and International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Famer Del McCoury and his Del McCoury Band, the internationally-acclaimed Kruger Brothers, featuring Blue Ridge Music Hall of Famer and Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Bluegrass and Banjo award winner Jens Kruger, and multiple IBMA Award winning banjo great Terry Baucom and his Dukes of Drive band.
Also scheduled to perform on this full day of live music will be Doc Watson’s friend and fellow guitar player Charles Welch, the IBMA Award-winning Liam Purcell and Cane Mill Road, the David Mayfield Parade, the sweet sounds of Mason Jar Confessions, songwriter-on-the-rise Will Easter and his band The Nomads, singer and songwriter extraordinaire Ashley Heath, the original music of Loose Roosters and Turpentine Shine, and local favorites Handlebar Betty.
Tickets are $30 in advance for VIP seating, which includes a seat under the tent, and $25 for general admission, which means bring your own chairs or blankets with no tent coverage. On the day of the show, those ticket prices rise to $35 and $30 respectively. Opening ceremonies are at 9:30 a.m. and the live music begins at 10 a.m. More information on tickets, seating and directions can be found at docwatsonmusicfest.org.
The Cove Creek School is a unique and beautiful building listed on the National Register of Historic Places that was built by the WPA in the early 1940s. They still hold school classes there, and it is also home to the Doc and Merle Watson Folk Art Museum, which will be open on the day of the festival.
This will be a special visit for Del McCoury as he headlines this year’s MusicFest. While McCoury was born in Maryland, his parents left their home in Bakersville, NC, located just 50 miles away Sugar Grove, with the young Del already conceived and growing in his mother’s womb as they migrated north. That is why the road from Bakersville to Roan Mountain, aka Route 261, is named the “Del McCoury Highway.”
“My Dad lived on that road, Route 261, that goes from Bakersville up to the top of Roan Mountain and then over into Tennessee,” said McCoury. “Roan Mountain is really an attraction. I used to go up there before they built a walkway where you could look out from the top of the mountain. Back then, it was just a rock. The last one to live at the old home place was an uncle of mine named Floyd McCoury. The house was by a little church right before you get up to Glen Ayre, that little settlement passed Bakersville. The church is on the left and on the right there is a little driveway that goes down to the right and crosses that creek. That is where my Papa grew up. My great grandpa took my Dad around and showed him where he homesteaded and drove in stakes there and he showed my Dad all of those stakes. That became the little old farm that they grew up on.”
McCoury always respected Doc Watson and loved his music. When the future Hall of Famer was starting out in the music business as a very young man performing with the Father of Bluegrass Bill Monroe in the early 1960s, he had a memorable encounter with Watson in California.
Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys played a two-week run at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles at one point. It was then that McCoury first met the legendary Doc Watson.
“Ralph Rinzler (musician, co-founder of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and manager of both Doc Watson and Bill Monroe) told Monroe, ‘I’m going to bring this guy out there to open the show for the Blue Grass Boys,’” said McCoury. “We had no idea who it was going to be. Bill didn’t know and I didn’t know, and it was Doc Watson. Doc didn’t bring his band with him, and it was him playing solo. Ralph wanted Bill and Doc to sing a bunch of Monroe Brothers songs because Doc knew all of this stuff. That was the first time we had ever met Doc.”
While Watson could have easily handled performing as a solo artist, he decided to ask for some musical accompaniment for this big city show.
“Because Doc didn’t have his band with him, he said to me, ‘Would you be interested in going out there and playing backup guitar with me?’” said McCoury. “I said, ‘Oh Lord, I don’t know what you do.’ Doc said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It is just them old fiddle tunes.’ I knew all of the old fiddle tunes. Doc was just playing them on the guitar. We went out there on the first night and I knew every tune he played and most of the songs that he sang. I ended up playing every night with him. That is how I met Doc Watson.”
Constantly updated information on the festival can be found at facebook.com/DocWatsonMusicFest/.
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