Organizers of the Rooster Walk Music & Arts Festival announced the addition of eight bands to the lineup, led by co-headlining acts Lettuce and the Sam Bush Band.
Perpetual Groove, Acoustic Syndicate, Town Mountain, Billy Strings, Naughty Professor and Junto were also announced as part of the bill for Rooster Walk 8, a multi-genre, family-friendly festival which will take place over Memorial Day weekend (May 26-29) at the Pop's Farm music venue near Martinsville, Va. These bands join a lineup that already included Jeff Austin Band, Tab Benoit, Yarn, Major & the Monbacks, After Jack, Lizzy Ross, Sanctum Sully (electric reunion) and Left Hip Pocket. More band additions will be announced in the coming weeks.
Lettuce has brought a new vitality to classic funk for more than two decades, matching their smooth and soulful grooves with a hip-hop-inspired urgency and mastery of beat. Formed in 1992, when several band members attended a summer program at Boston's Berklee College of Music, Lettuce was founded on a shared love of legendary funk artists like Earth, Wind & Fire and Tower of Power.
Sam Bush, a Grammy Award winning multi-instrumentalist alternately known as the King of Telluride and the King of Newgrass, has helped to expand the horizons of bluegrass music, fusing it with jazz, rock, blues, funk and other styles. Bush is the co-founder of the genre-bending band New Grass Revival and an in-demand musician who has played with everyone from Emmylou Harris and Bela Fleck to Charlie Haden, Lyle Lovett and Garth Brooks.
Rooster Walk 8 will feature roughly 50 bands, many of which will play multiple sets over the course of the weekend. RW8 will also showcase a wide variety of arts, crafts, children's activities, food, craft beer, vendors, a 5k footrace, on-site camping and more. For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit www.roosterwalk.com.
Rooster Walk was created in memory of two Martinsville natives who passed away while still in their mid-20s: Edwin "the Rooster" Penn and Walker Shank. The festival is organized and operated by Rooster Walk Inc., a community nonprofit dedicated to promoting music, arts and education in Martinsville and Henry County.
In a little more than six years, Rooster Walk Inc. has donated more than $80,000 to local charities, among them the Penn-Shank Memorial Scholarship Fund for seniors at Martinsville High School and an instrument donation and repair program for entry-level band programs at public schools in Martinsville and Henry County.