Deep Roots Festival hits streets of downtown

The time has come for downtown Milledgeville’s fall festival tradition to begin. Music, arts and crafts, food and even a car show will fill the streets at this year’s eighth Deep Roots Festival on Saturday, Oct. 22.

GC students can look forward to this year’s musical lineup. Music will flood the streets beginning at 1:15 p.m. with Milledgeville Idol and will end with the Athens native rock outfit The Whigs, hitting the stage at 10:15 p.m. Other acts leading up to the final performance include Milledgeville Idol, Trout Fishing In America, Free Lance Ruckus, Davin McCoy & The Coming Attractions, Cowboy Boyer & Talton and Reptar.

Jimmy Holder, the music committee chair for Deep Roots, says he started the process to fill the festival’s music schedule beginning between March and April. During the process, he reviewed countless bands and also took into account suggestions from the community. All of the bands are from Georgia excepts for four-time-Grammy-nominated Trout Fishing In America.

“This year was a little different, because I wanted to book mostly Georgia artists,” Holder said. Music is not the only thing to make up Deep Roots Festival. As of now, approximately 60 different vendors from all over will have booths lining downtown’s streets showcasing a plethora of homemade items. According to Justin Jones, committee chair of arts and crafts for Deep Roots, approximately 90 percent of the vendors come from Georgia, and 40 percent are people that have not participated before in the festival. He says that he is excited about the new addition of vendors to the festival.

“I’ve been getting applications every day so far, several people calling me earlier this morning that are applying,” Jones said. “I think we got plenty of space for them this year. The only people I am turning down are the people that have not hand-made what they are selling. That’s the only stipulation is that you are selling things that you made by hand, just because we certainly don’t want to compete with local businesses that are already downtown.”

Some items for sale that students can look forward to are wooden crafts, basketry, jewelry, handmade children’s clothing, monogrammed items, handmade soaps, real sheep’s wool blankets and scarves, quilts, folk art, paintings, pottery and even photography.

When it comes time to satisfy your hunger, stop by the barbecue cook-off tent and participate in the annual People’s Choice BBQ Championship. Starting at 11:30 a.m. people will be able to purchase a “blind box” filled with four different samples of barbecue, made by different teams in the contest, for only $5. Heather Holder, committee chair for the barbecue contest, says that the winner of the contest will receive $1,100.

“People’s Choice is the opportunity for the general public to try competitive barbecue, which is heads and tails above anything you could ever buy at a restaurant or have at a cookout,” Holder said.

As a part of the barbecue contest, 18 registered teams will be competing in three professional categories. These categories are whole hog, shoulder and ribs. There will also be ancillary categories being judged that include stew, sauce, poultry, margarita and bloody mary. Holder says that the number of teams competing has stayed the same as last year’s.

“The number of teams has stayed the same, but we are hosting more teams from out of state. We have Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama represented along with many Georgia teams. They are competing in many more categories as well, so even though there are the same number total, it is a growth year for us,” Holder said.

Courtney Hamlett, a senior mass communications major, has attended Deep Roots for the past several years during her time at GC and says she is very excited about all the live music.

“The thing that I am excited about the most for Deep Roots is the fact that I’ve actually gotten friends from out of town to come get involved in it,” Hamlett said. “I actually had my best friends come down from Athens last year and they enjoyed it so much that they are coming back down this year again. I am really excited for the live music and everything and it think its fun to just have all the people in town kind of come together and have one big annual thing.”

Posted by Lauren Davidson on Oct 20 2011. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.