Outlaw Music Festival

Despite the shifting lineup of artists from year to year, Willie Nelson, naturally, is at the center of each show, and when you’re watching him perform you’re seeing an American treasure in action. But there’s a lot more going on at the festival, as fans have found out over the years. The Outlaw stage has hosted the impassioned R&B/folk/blues amalgam of living legend Van Morrison, the blistering blues-rock sounds that turned the Tedeschi Trucks Band into a musical institution, the freewheeling, jam-happy journey of The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and many, many others. For fans of Americana-oriented music, it’s tough to think of a better way to spend a summer day (and night), and this festival gives as many people as possible that opportunity by taking it in on the road.

Spearheaded by no less iconic a figure than Willie Nelson, the Outlaw Music Festival started out in 2016 and turned into an annual shape-shifting celebration of roots-based music’s many forms. Dipping into rock, country, folk, blues and bluegrass, the festival has included Alison Krauss, Old Crow Medicine Show, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Sturgill Simpson, Van Morrison, Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow, Phil Lesh and Friends, Robert Plant & The Sensational Shape Shifters, Bonnie Raitt, Counting Crows and plenty more. The Outlaw Village that’s a part of each event date gives fans a chance to enjoy local foods and crafts and to commune with fellow music lovers while they’re not busy being bowled over by what’s happening onstage. Not every artist at The Outlaw Music Festival is American, but they’re all profoundly influenced by the many strands of music that make up the Americana tapestry.