Backwoods Beat Festival is a weekend of music and arts in beautiful Sparta, North Carolina
honoring and memorializing the late T.J. Worthington, a local artist, writer, and music supporter.
Since 2017, The Backwoods Beat Music & Art Festival has centered around two well-know musical headliners. They conduct singing, songwriting, and performance workshops on Saturday. The headliners then perform in the evening to sold out crowds at Muddy Creek Music Hall.
The day of the show we have many singer-songwriters performing Music on Main Street at various venues from 10:00 am – 4:00 pm, most of which are within walking distance. A free shuttle is provided.
Dilly Dally Alley is our wonderfully immersive children’s music and arts activity area adjacent to the show’s boundary.
2022 Concerts at Muddy Creek Music Hall – 8:00 pm, ticketed concerts:
- June 24 – Slaid Cleaves – Slaid Cleaves is an American singer-songwriter born in Washington, D.C. and raised in South Berwick, Maine and Round Pond, Maine, United States. An alumnus of Tufts University, where he majored in English and philosophy, Cleaves lives in Austin, Texas.
Cleaves’s musical roots extend back prior to his days playing in a high school “garage band” with his childhood friend Rod Picott. The two shared a love of music, especially Bruce Springsteen and named their band The Magic Rats, after a character in Springsteen’s song “Jungleland.” - June 25 – Risi Palmer – Rissi Palmer’s gift lies in reaching across all musical boundaries. While she made her mark in Country Music, she is equally at home in R&B music, bringing the entire spectrum of popular music to bear on music she calls “Southern Soul.” The daughter of Georgia natives, Rissi was born near Pittsburgh, PA and spent her adolescent years in St. Louis, Missouri. Raised in a musical family that loved both country and R&B, Rissi was a part of a singing and dancing troupe sponsored by a local television station at age 16, and by the time she was 19 years old, she had already been offered her first publishing and label deal.
