Spotlight on Performers at The Playhouse Family Music Festival
Nationally popular with both adults and kids, Billy Jonas has won multiple awards including a Parent's Choice Gold. His DVD, Everybody’s in the Band, was recommended by the New York Times. Reviewers describe Jonas’s music as “original and fun for the whole family. It features an interactive style that invites everyone to sing and ‘bang’ along.” Based in Asheville, Jonas plays across the country throughout the year. This will be Jonas’s only appearance in the Boone area this summer and fall.
Also headquartered in Asheville, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, aka Cactus Sullivan, mixes traditional funk, bluegrass, reggae and blues with classic golden age hip hop beats in his story filled album Easy, including “Luck,” which is the #1 song on XMKids radio. A father himself, 23 Skidoo combines positive messages with infectious beats. Visitors to 23 Skidoo’s website, www.childstyle.org, can catch glimpses of 
Boone residents Mariyah and Levi Rawl as well as his daughter among the kids in his video for “I Gotta Be Me.”
Based in Boone, the Lost Ridge Band’s sound is inspired by 
The Grateful Dead, Railroad Earth, Steve Earl, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Bela Fleck, The Dillards, and Widespread Panic. Their members are Pete and Phil Washburn, Elijah Davenport, Shane Crawford, and Peter Hanast. Pete Washburn’s wife, Jesse, designed this year’s festival logo.
Local Watauga phenoms, the Forget-Me-Nots are fiddlers Ledah and Willa Finck (ages 14 and 12), Maura Shawn Scanlin (age 12), and back-up guitarist-dad David Finck. The girls have been playing together for nine years, since they were ages 4, 3, and 2 years old. Their music mixes traditional Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, and Appalachian fiddle music, with a helping of contemporary tunes. The Forget-Me-Nots have performed at a number of regional venues, including the Merlefest and the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games.
Another local ensemble, the BDBs from Todd, featuring Dave Hutchinson, Paul and Vanessa Van Valin, will play everything from pop music to folk music, original music, ethnic music, and even some operatic music.
The Elkland Arts Center puppet troupe will perform at puppet show about recycling “Jason’s Dream,” sponsored by
the Watauga County Recycling program.
Other entertainment at the festival will include both the Appalachian Rhythm Cloggers, the High Country Cloggers, Jack Tales performed by the interns of the Blowing Rock Stage Company, and more.