A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about the Bluegrass & Chili Festival, one of Oklahoma’s longest-lived annual musical events. In that column, director Dell Davis explained how she’d had to move the festival from Pryor to Tahlequah for 2025 because of a date conflict with the Mayes County Fair.
Since its 1979 origin, the Bluegrass & Chili Festival has been staged in only five northeastern Oklahoma cities: Tulsa, Claremore, Wagoner, Pryor and, this year, Tahlequah. Pryor only had it for a single appearance, in 2024. That was enough, however, for local leaders and others to see what a free live-music presentation could do for their city.
“Last year, we got presented with the idea, we set it all up, and of course we were working with Dell, who is fabulous,” says Zac Doyle, Pryor’s mayor. “We collaborated with our Main Street [Program], our Chamber [of Commerce], our Economic Development Agency and we went all in. We had about three months to put it together, we put it together, and it was a total success.
“We made sure our businesses downtown knew that this was for them, that they’d have some revenues, and at the end of the day every one of them had record sales. Every vendor that we had out here on the street said it was the best day they’d ever had. We had some of the artists, their agents, reach back to us and offer to help; they said from an artist’s perspective the venue in Pryor was top-notch.”
It brought out a top-notch crowd, too, with an estimated 10,000 showing up for the weekend festivities. So, when the Bluegrass & Chili Festival left for Tahlequah, the townspeople who’d worked with Davis decided to begin their own annual bluegrass event. And so was born the Pryor Creek Bluegrass and BBQ Festival, set for Oct. 17 and 18 in downtown Pryor.
Set for Oct. 17-18, the inaugural Pryor Creek Bluegrass and BBQ Festival aims to broaden the bluegrass genre and offer ample family-oriented entertainment. Photos courtesy Brett Bingham unless otherwise marked
“You know,” Doyle says, “Pryor is notorious for its music festivals. We’ve got Rocklahoma and Born & Raised, and collectively, those two alone will bring about 100,000 people into our town. So now we’re rolling with the bluegrass, with the idea of the free family-friendly music and atmosphere. We’ve had nothing but tremendous support from sponsors and the community.”
In addition to switching the spotlighted food to barbecue – “Who doesn’t love barbecue in October?” asks Doyle rhetorically – this event also “broadens the ‘bluegrass’ definition a little bit.” That’s according to Brett Bingham, who worked with the famed Oklahoma-based booking agent Ray Bingham to line up the talent for the inaugural Pryor Creek Bluegrass and BBQ Festival.
“They [the organizers] reached out to Ray Bingham Productions, asking for help with the entertainment, and Ray and I have worked tirelessly to secure the best possible lineup for the festival,” says Brett Bingham, himself a veteran booking agent and manager, who’s also Ray’s nephew. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Brett has written two books with me, Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk, about the Cain’s Ballroom, and Thanks – Thanks A Lot, the as-told-to biography of country-music legend Billy Parker.)
“The event last year was wildly successful in Pryor,” he adds, “and it was a total joint effort.
We’re going to try to do something similar, but we’re going to stretch the boundaries a little bit. I don’t want to alienate people who are bluegrass fans. They’re going to see [bluegrass stars] like Ralph Stanley II, One-Eyed Jack and the Cox Family. We’ve got some strong bluegrass acts. We also have people like an up-and-comer from Ada, Emily Rhyne, who was a contestant on The Voice. She’s a little more country-leaning, but she’s somewhat traditional, too.”
“We’re not as stringent on the qualifications for bluegrass,” notes Doyle. “I think we’re pretty flexible on the definition of what it is. The main thing is that we’re looking for something close to that genre that’s family-friendly and free.”
A six-person Pryor-based group called Lightly Salted is set to begin the Pryor Creek Bluegrass and Barbecue Festival at 5 p.m. Friday. The band members’ Facebook page calls them a “rock and soul cover band,” adding that the group plans to offer “familiar Americana tunes” at the Pryor Creek fest.
Also on the Friday bill are well-known bluegrass acts the Rick Faris Band and the Cox Family.
“The Cox Family is a pretty renowned bluegrass band. Among many other things, they were involved in the [2000 film] O Brother, Where Art Thou? And Rick Faris was the 2022 International Bluegrass Music Association’s New Artist of the Year. He’s got [the Oklahoma-based mandolinist and guitarist] Henry Byron Burgess as part of his band.”
Saturday, the festival is set to kick off at noon with SpringStreet, touted on YouTube and elsewhere as “Oklahoma’s longest-running bluegrass band.” Then, the aforementioned Emily Rhyne, followed by Chuck Mead and the Stalwarts.
“This is where we highlight a group that isn’t necessarily bluegrass but, as Zac said, is family-friendly,” explains Bingham. “Chuck clearly isn’t bluegrass; he was with BR5-49, and he and his band will add a little hillbilly edge to the shenanigans.
“Then we’ll bring on One-Eyed Jack, which was [Guthrie-based fiddle virtuoso] Byron Berline’s band. When Byron passed [in 2021], they continued on as One-Eyed Jack. They’ve got the family’s blessing, and they have all of Byron’s arrangements. So in a sense, it’ll be a tribute to Byron. They’re keeping his legacy alive. And, of course, Byron was such a big bluegrass name.”
The next act, Bingham notes, may not be as recognizable as some of the others. Listeners to SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel, however, will likely know Jim Lauderdale from The Buddy and Jim Show, which Lauderdale does with fellow performer and songwriter Buddy Miller. A longtime recording artist and producer as well as a songwriter, he wrote and produced, among many other discs, two with bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley. George Strait has recorded 14 of his compositions, and the likes of Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, the Chicks, and Elvis Costello have also cut his songs.
“He’s one of those artists whose music people have heard,” Bingham says, “whether they know it or not. He’ll have his whole band, the Game Changers, with him.”
The Pryor Creek Bluegrass and Barbecue Festival is scheduled to end with Ralph Stanley II, Stanley’s son, and his Clinch Mountain Boys, followed by the Malpass Brothers.
“We’ll be occasionally straying a little bit from the traditional during the day, but we come right back to it with Ralph Stanley II,” Bingham says. “And then, the Malpass Brothers are coming in all the way from North Carolina, where they’ll be playing a bluegrass festival two days before. They toured with Merle Haggard in the later years of Merle’s life, they’ve got a show on RFD-TV, and they’re pretty traditional. They wear suits and tell jokes and do harmonies in the style of the Louvin Brothers; they’re one of the most traditional roots acts out there.
“We’re kind of touching a lot of different bases,” he concludes. “We’ll see what works, and how it’s perceived. I’d love to see it turn into a little more of an Americana event, and spotlight some of those types of artists. So we’ll see what happens. I thought Zac said it well: keep it family-friendly, and free.”
