BUCHTEL, Ohio — Dakota Tatman has a new Nelsonville Music Festival program to add to the collection he’s grown over the past ten years. He and his friends have attended “on and off” since The Flaming Lips headlined the festival in 2015.
When the festival moved from Hocking College to its current location at Snow Fork Event Center, Tatman wasn’t sure if he would continue to attend.
“I was like ‘It’s going to get too big and too full of itself, and kind of lose the whole community vibe,’ but it hasn’t at all,” he said. “In fact, it’s gotten better.”
NMF celebrated its 20th anniversary June 18–20 with a lineup featuring headliners Geese, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and Marcus King Band. The festival serves as a fundraiser for Stuart’s Opera House.
The festival sold out of its weekend passes in advance for the first time in its two-decade history. Hundreds of visitors of all ages gathered for music, food, and a vendors’ market at the festival.
Sitting outside of his camping trailer with friends, Tatman reflected on the sense of community he feels at NMF. While he has attended other festivals like Bonaroo, Summer Camp, and Forecastle, it’s the friendliness of NMF attendees that keeps him coming back.
While theft can be an issue at other festival campsites, Tatman said that his “neighbors” are always willing to offer help to one another.
“By the end of this weekend, I’ll probably have at least five new friends in my phone,” he said.
Stormy weather tests campers
Thunderstorms on Wednesday night made camping a challenge for those who set up tents on the camping grounds, aka Mudville. Nelsonville remained under a flash flood warning until noon on Thursday as attendees began arriving.
For first-time festival goers Ashley and John Grupe, a flat tire on their drive from Missouri to Ohio spared them a rainy night on the NMF grounds, but they wanted to be “flexible” on their first camping trip together.
“We don’t have a big fancy setup or anything, but we’re making it work,” Ashley Grupe said.
Zack Sliver spent the night in a tent, and woke up at 3:30 a.m. Thursday morning worried it would blow away in the high-speed winds. His tent didn’t flood and he was able to quickly dry it the next day by hanging it like a flag.
“Perfect tent,” he said. “I can’t wait to give them a review.”
NMF stays ahead of the industry
Stuart’s Opera House and Nelsonville Music Festival Artistic Director Tim Peacock attributed this year’s sold-out weekend passes to headliner Geese and the band’s dedicated fanbase.
Now a globally known act, Geese played NMF in 2023 before exploding in popularity in late 2025, demonstrating the festival’s status as a “tastemaker,” as attendee Drew Phipps said.
“It sets the tone for what people are going to be listening to in a year or two,” he said.
Phipps cited past performers like Amyl and the Sniffers, who released some of their most popular singles months after their 2024 NMF performance. This year, Geese drew crowds of high-energy fans to their late-night set at the festival’s main stage, Howard’s Stage.
Fans started gathering as early as 10:30 a.m. for the band’s soundcheck, including Bram Woods, who wore a T-shirt featuring Geese frontman Cameron Winter’s face on the back.
Woods and his brother travelled from Utah to meet up with friends whom they met through Geese fan platforms online. For him, Winter’s unique approach to music made the band an act worth seeing.
“I think that they’re unique to rock right now,” Woods said. “Cameron Winter in general is doing his own thing, and you can just tell by the way he is in the industry that he’s gonna be big.”
Woods “had no idea” what Ohio looked like before visiting for NMF.
Isabelle Brower, who wore a crochet hat shaped like a goose to see Geese for the 14th time, was surprised by the festival’s location.
“We’re talking about how lush the trees are here,” Brower said.
A festival that stays in touch with its roots
When Kelly Miller first came to NMF for her son’s 18th birthday, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I thought we were coming to Woodstock four years ago,” Miller said.
But after experiencing the friendliness of the attendees and the cleanliness of the bathrooms, they knew they’d be coming back. The Millers are a family of Ohio University alumni and current students, and they use the festival as an annual opportunity to visit Athens.
Anna Miller, Kelly’s daughter, sees the diverse lineup of artists at the festival as a way to find new artists, like John Vincent III, who played NMF in 2024.
“I knew one of his songs, and then I saw him play, and he’s one of my top artists now,” she said.
The age range of audience members speaks to the lineup’s wide-ranging appeal, Miller said. With a blend of new artists like alternative rock group Wednesday and folk musician Mon Rovîa, and established acts like headliners Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, the festival attracted a diverse audience over its three days of performances.
For Anna Miller, the festival is a way of listening to music she might not have heard otherwise.
“I feel like I’ve been introduced to a whole different host of genres that I never would have been, and that’s truly a testament to how open and accepting this community is,” she said.
Vendors appeal to festival’s values
Chelsea and Evan Bunn stood in the shade of their vendors’ booth, representing their Appalachian lifestyle brand Local Yokels Trading Co. Festival attendees browsed their selection of shirts, reading “Y’all means All” and “Don’t forget where ya came from.”
The husband-wife duo started vending at festivals in 2022, including Healing Appalachia in Kentucky and Bridge Day in West Virginia. In the past, customers have told them their “vibe fit Nelsonville really well,” so they decided to give the festival a try this year.
“The organizers have been really good,” Evan Bunn said. “They work with us really well. Just the back and forth, they cover all their bases. It’s one of the better ones we’ve done.”
The Bunns were one of dozens of local vendors who sold clothes, crafts, and food over the course of the three day festival.
Volunteering boosts festival accessibility
Dotting the festival grounds, disposal stations prompted attendees to sort their waste into trash, recycling, and compostables. That trash was collected and sorted by volunteers at Zero Waste Event Productions, including Eli Talbot, who helped collect litter on the final day of the festival.
“Everybody here, the campsites and the festival grounds, have been really mindful about where garbage is going,” he said.
He and other volunteers pay a reduced ticket price of $20 and work three four-hour shifts over the three days.
At first, Talbot was worried that being a volunteer would interfere with his ability to watch performances, but he found himself enjoying the weekend “just as much as I would being around the music.”
Zero Waste volunteer Tyler Hammond agreed that she felt “integrated” into the festival despite her shifts. She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to see Wine Lips on the Porch Stage on Saturday, but found a way to combine her volunteering with the set.
“I really wanted to see this band that’s playing now, and we’re actually gonna get to see it because we’re cleaning up around here,” she said. “The volunteering goes by really fast.”
Supporting the next generation of musicians
On Friday and Saturday, middle and high school students took the Porch Stage at Nelsonville to perform both original songs and covers. The performances followed a year of preparation as part of Stuart’s Opera House’s Afterschool Music Program.
Stuart’s Opera House Director of Arts Education Adam Remnant has overseen the program since it consisted of only one group of students who met weekly. Now, with over 65 students enrolled in the program, they meet four times a week.
For Remnant, watching students grow over the course of the school year and gain confidence in their abilities is rewarding.
“Some students start the year out with a lot of anxiety about performing in front of an audience,” he said. “They can’t imagine being able to write a song, let alone perform that song in front of an audience, and by the end of the year, they’ve done both of those things.”
Students are placed in bands based on their instrument, availability, and musical influences. Interest in the program has grown, and the program had to turn away around a dozen students this year.
To expand its reach, AMP recently launched an audio production program. Remnant hopes to introduce a semester-long program that would run alongside the full-year program and make room for more students to participate.
“Watching them grow and learn, and just become dynamic performers or artists in their own right, it’s just lovely to watch,” he said.
Kelly Miller also values the community emphasis of the festival and makes sure to attend the AMP bands’ performances every year.
“We’ve been very blessed living in Columbus that art has been a thing in our family, and we had easy access to it,” she said.
The application for AMP 2026-2027 is now open for seventh-12th grade students until July 16.
