Concert Review: AMERICANAFEST ’26: When Nashville Becomes the Festival

16 hours ago

5 min read

There are music festivals, and then there's Americana Fest. For five days, the city of Nashville doesn't host a festival, it becomes one.

From September 15 through 19, more than 200 artists took over more than 50 venues across Music City, with nearly 300 official events packed into the schedule.

Clubs, theaters, restaurants, historic spaces and neighborhood rooms all became stages. The result is equal parts festival you attend and massive music scavenger hunt.

For anyone trying to take it in, it becomes an exercise in logistics, quick meals, bad parking decisions and constantly asking one question:

Where the hell am I supposed to be in 20 minutes?

That chaos is part of the appeal.

Nashville is uniquely equipped for something this sprawling. Music isn't an attraction here, it's infrastructure. The city already has the rooms, the musicians, the history and the audience. The festival simply throws open the doors and lets everything collide.

One minute you're watching an established artist in a tiny club. The next, you're across town chasing another set. There's no realistic way to see everything, and that's probably the point.

One of the first reminders of what makes the week so unusual came at 3rd & Lindsley, where Amy Grant, Maggie Rose and Melissa Etheridge all delivered standout sets.

Amy Grant

Maggie Rose

Three very different artists. One very small room.

Seeing Melissa Etheridge in a venue of roughly 400 people is one of those moments that sounds slightly ridiculous when you stop and think about it. An artist whose career has filled arenas was standing on a stage where the distance between performer and audience practically disappeared.

That's one of the great things about this festival. It shrinks the distance. The overall event is enormous, but some of its best moments happen in rooms that are anything but.

That became even more apparent at The American Legion Post #82 in East Nashville. Sun Records took over the Legion for a day party featuring Duane Betts, Robert Randolph, Ruthie Foster and Nicole Atkins.

There's something wonderfully Nashville about looking around an American Legion and realizing that Duane Betts and Robert Randolph are about to play. History, legacy and discovery can all occupy the same space.

Duane Betts became one of the recurring highlights of the week for me. I caught and photographed two of his performances, and the contrast between them was almost as interesting as the music itself.

The American Legion set was acoustic and intimate, perfectly suited to the afternoon. Later, at Brooklyn Bowl, the scale changed.

Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs found the stage earlier in the evening, bringing a much more rock-oriented edge to the bill.

Campbell carries decades of American rock history with him as a longtime member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but the Dirty Knobs weren't there to play a history lesson. They were there to play rock 'n' roll. Margo Price even joined Campbell and the Dirty Knobs for their encore.

The guitars were loud; the edges were loose and the set fit naturally into a festival that doesn't seem particularly interested in keeping genres in separate boxes.

Jay Buchanan of Rival Sons followed, bringing an entirely different kind of intensity. His vocal range naturally invites comparisons to Chris Cornell, but Buchanan has his own combination of blues, soul and hard rock that makes the comparison only part of the story.

Then Duane Betts took the stage to headline. The Allman Brothers family tree is impossible to ignore, but Betts isn't simply recreating the past. The music has deep roots, but it feels like a modern vintage.

Nicole Atkins eventually joined the band for “Whipping Post,” giving one of the Allman Brothers' most recognizable songs its moment in another generation.

That lineup alone says plenty about the week: Southern rock, blues, Americana and straight-up rock 'n' roll all sharing the same stage without anyone worrying too much about where one genre ends and another begins.

Then came the detour. While the festival was filling venues across Nashville, the rest of the city's concert calendar didn't stop. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine was playing Cannery Hall.

There was no chance I was skipping that. I left the Americana circuit and headed across town to photograph Morello and opening act Ike Reilly, two Illinois-bred musicians who also share a hometown: Libertyville.

Reilly brought his mix of punk, folk, country and rock before Morello took over and did what Tom Morello does best: make a guitar sound like something it shouldn't.

The show was loud, aggressive and completely outside the traditional Americana lane. Morello moved through his material ranging from Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave and his solo work, while Reilly joined him for Woody Guthrie's “This Land Is Your Land.”

Two guys from the same Illinois town, decades into careers built around loud guitars and outspoken protest songs, standing on a Nashville stage together. It was a hell of a detour.

Then it was back to the festival. Next stop: Exit/In.

Morgan Wade was playing a venue that felt comically small compared with the last time I photographed her.

In July 2025, I photographed Wade at Madison Square Garden in New York while she opened for Bush and Shinedown. Now she was at Exit/In.

The room was packed, and getting photographs was a logistical chess match. There wasn't much chance of casually strolling into the photo pit, so I floated through the crowd, found whatever angles and vantage points I could and fought my way around a tiny room that was completely full. It was worth it.

There is something different about photographing an artist in a room where the crowd is practically on top of the stage. The scale changes the entire experience. And that's the part of covering a citywide festival that never shows up on the schedule.

The schedule tells you where the artists are. It doesn't tell you how you're going to get there, whether you'll get inside, whether there will be room to shoot or whether the next set is starting while you're still looking for parking. That's the marathon.

Another stop took me to City Winery for Rita Wilson.

The set was great, but one of the coolest moments came afterward. Tom Hanks was there, supporting his wife and her music.

No red carpet. No big production. Just one of those unexpected moments that happens when you spend a week bouncing around this city chasing music.

Here's what Americana Fest felt like:

You make a schedule, it falls apart. You make another one, that falls apart too. You chase the next set, you discover another artist. You miss something you wanted to see because something else was too good to leave.

You drive across Nashville. You photograph a legend in a 400-capacity room. Then you photograph another legend inside an American Legion.

And somewhere across town, hundreds of other artists are playing rooms you simply don't have enough hours to reach.

You can't see everything. You can't perfectly plan it. You can't control the traffic, the schedules or the inevitable conflict between two sets you desperately want to catch. But you can chase the next one.

Nashville has always been a city where music can happen almost anywhere. For one week, Americana Fest makes that idea impossible to miss.

The biggest names show up in rooms that feel impossibly small. Established artists share bills with musicians still building their audiences. A historic record label takes over an American Legion. A musician you've photographed at Madison Square Garden suddenly finds herself in a room with a capacity of 500.

And somewhere across town, an artist you've never heard of might be playing the set you wish you hadn't missed.

That's Americana Fest. You don't conquer it, it conquers you. And after a few days of trying to keep up, one thing becomes clear:

Nashville wasn't hosting Americana Fest. For five days, Nashville was Americana Fest.

Denita