Photographs by Catherine Grace
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Every spring Tim Peacock says that year’s Nelsonville Music Festival will be his last, but he knows he can’t quit. His staff won’t let him. And he can’t give up on his adopted home community.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Peacock is artistic director of Stuart’s Opera House, a nonprofit theater on Nelsonville’s downtown public square built in 1879. He launched the Nelsonville Music Festival in 2005 as a fund-raiser for Stuart’s, and this year’s edition June 18–20 is the 20th anniversary event (taking into account two missed years during the pandemic). The festival provides about 50 percent of the organization’s annual revenue.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Stuart’s has evolved from a historic performance hall to an arts education hub for the town of 5,300 in Athens County, offering music, drama, painting, and poetry programs for children and adults as well as summer arts camps. Peacock feels they’re making a real difference in a struggling community.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
“Athens County is generally considered the poorest of Ohio’s 88 counties,” he says. “All of our programs were free until just a few years ago, and many still are. The middle school here lost its art teacher due to budget cuts, so we funded a full-time teacher for two years until the school district could afford it again.”
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Nelsonville’s unlikely rise as a nationally respected music festival owes something to the popularity of remote camping-centric events like Bonnaroo, Coachella, and even Burning Man. Tucked in the Hocking Hills and surrounded by Wayne National Forest, it’s a quiet country community, Peacock says, that musical artists and festival-goers have come to love.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
This year’s event features Geese, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Mavis Staples, The Marcus King Band, and more than 40 other acts on three stages as well as a late-night tent. Past festivals have hosted such notable artists as The Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, The Decemberists, The Flaming Lips, Taj Mahal, Willie Nelson, Ween, Wilco, and Lucinda Williams.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
“Local businesses of all kinds tell me this is their busiest weekend every year,” says Peacock. “Food vendors, arts and crafts people, everyone. So they all put up with the extra traffic and noise.”
Photograph by Catherine Grace
The community takes ownership in the festival, with 500 volunteers signing up every year. That’s in addition to Stuart’s Opera House’s 10 full-time and four part-time staff, who manage the festival weekend. Peacock and two or three other staffers work on the festival year-round.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Peacock grew up in Toledo and came to the Nelsonville area to attend Hocking College, hoping to get a fisheries and wildlife degree. Instead, he stumbled into booking bands at bars in nearby Athens and then at Stuart’s, which hired him in 2002.
His festival has attracted almost 300,000 attendees over its 20 years, and he’s booked more than 600 different bands and musicians. One year’s event drew fans from 38 states, connecting Nelsonville to the outside world in innumerable ways. “I came for college and found a home,” says Peacock. “And now I’m basically an adrenaline junkie. I can’t stop.”
Cincinnati photographer Catherine Grace has been documenting the Nelsonville Music Festival for the past decade. Enjoy a selection of her images.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Festival fans come for performances by Low Cut Connie (above, 2025) and Courtney Barnett (below, 2024) and to just hang around with family, friends, and costumed characters.
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Photograph by Catherine Grace
Past Nelsonville acts have included Antibalas (top right, 2018); Margo Price (top left, 2023); Connor Oberst (right, 2017); Lucinda Williams (left, 2023); Tank and the Bangas (bottom left, 2018); and Bonnie Prince Billy (bottom right, 2025). More than 40 acts will perform this year, from Geese and The Marcus King Band to Mavis Staples and Gillian Welch with David Rawlings.
Facebook Comments