FloydFest kicks off its 2022 event Wednesday for a final time on the original site just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Patrick County with a small piece of the sprawling property extending into Floyd County for a parking lot.

I began covering the event in 2005 for The Floyd Press and other media outlets with stories, photos, and videos and did 15 of them before deciding that my old bones, hampered by a broken leg in a motorcycle accident in late 2012, could no longer traverse the rolling hills of the site.

FloydFest was my second foray into festival coverage. From 1969 through 1979, I covered the Mississippi River Festival on the campus of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, IL, in the metro St. Louis area for The Telegraph, a paper I worked for in Alton.

Music and coverage of it have been a mainstay of my career as a newspaperman and photojournalist for more than 50 years and I have my cameras (both film and still) at the weekly Friday Night Jamboree in Floyd, the Galax Fiddlers’ Convention, and other spots in Southwestern Virginia. Hopefully, I will be able to keep covering such events in the coming years.

The film clip at the top of this article was a compilation of material captured during the years of FloydFest and I will publish more during the week to highlight what has become a major entertainment event that brings more focus to the music culture of our county and area.

In 2023, FloydFest moves to a new site near Check, just off U.S. 221 with 200 acres that will provide full onsite parking and other amenities that were sprawled around several parts on and off the site in Patrick County.

A few residents of the area, as happens too often when change comes to our area, are bitching and moaning about the move. Too bad. FloydFest is and will continue to be, a major force in and around Floyd County. The many benefits far outweigh the petty gripes of a few.

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