The largest festival in North Mississippi<\/strong>, and biggest free festival in the state, is set to celebrate its 27th year, and the city is gearing up again to showcase remarkable, world-class music\/visual arts and food culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently voted \u201cBest Small College Town\u201d in a USA Today <\/em>poll, Oxford has seldom maintained such positive national attention and allure. For Visit Oxford<\/strong>\u200a\u200a\u2014\u200a\u200athe local tourist information and visitor\u2019s center that works in conjunction with numerous sponsors and other parts of the community\u200a\u200a\u2014\u200a\u200athis most certainly is cause for great pride for its ongoing efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There can\u2019t possibly be any one weekend of the year that fits perfectly for everyone\u2019s schedule, but the perennially late-April event, which falls this year on the 26th and 27th, is about as dialed in as it\u2019s ever going to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally a busy but prime time of year for mid-South outdoor events, before too many critters are in the air or portable fans are needed, April is a time of year when University students are still in town and parents are likely to pay a visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because it\u2019s a popular season throughout the region for music and arts festivals, springtime is more feasible for performing artists, and they can anticipate that it will consistently fall around the same weekend. When it comes to routing a tour, many full-time musicians set their schedules as far as a year or two out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also doesn\u2019t hurt the local economy to have the financial resources of parental attendees, as opposed to broke college students, which might be the case if it happened another time of year, because after all, over half of the funding goes towards paying the musicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe want to do it when the parents can come visit,\u201d said Visit Oxford Executive Director Kinney Ferris<\/strong>, who has watched the festival grow steadily throughout her tenure with the tourism center\u200a\u200a\u2014\u200a\u200aaside from the two years that were canceled due to Covid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regards to those who might prefer the festival move to a slower time of year, Ferris said that she is always willing to hear out community members for their reasoning, but that the festival will remain around the same dates for the foreseeable future, \u201cfor a lot of reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferris revels in the general mission of putting on the event, which is to provide a little something for everyone, including a consistently diverse music line-up that always provides a little something for all tastes. For instance, the Alumni Association Rebel Road Trip<\/strong> is included in the program this year, which invites Rebel coaches and University leadership to stage as part of an eight-city tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ole Miss<\/strong> Head Football Coach Lane Kiffin<\/strong> is among the coaches in the caravan, as well as Vice-Chancellor for Intercollegiate Athletics Keith Carter<\/strong>, and Alumni Association CEO Kirk Purdom<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferris and other organizers have arrived at the number 150 for what they believe is a suitable amount of booths, considering the overall size of the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe feel like we\u2019ve got the art vendor thing under control. We just know our limits. We are sort of landlocked,\u201d Ferris joked. She feels that adding any more booths would jeopardize the vendors\u2019 premium spots. Although Ferris and fellow-producers make it a goal not to edge out any regional artists, she does admit that it can be quite strenuous and \u201cgrueling\u201d to set up a base, then take it down afterwards. In light of this fact, the festival has consistently welcomed new vendors as well as seasoned locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve brought in some new artists, which is fun and exciting. And then there\u2019s some that have done it every single year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While a handful of the Double Decker musical performers of the past have returned to the line-up\u200a\u200a\u2014\u200a\u200aand continue to do so this year\u200a\u2014\u200aothers will be joining the fest for the first time after years of discussion. Headlining this year is talented guitarist\/singer-songwriter Brittany Howard<\/strong>, well known as leader of the Athens, Alabama<\/strong>, rock band Alabama Shakes<\/strong>, which formed in 2009 and enjoyed mainstream success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking to her for quite some time,\u201d said Ferris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also happy about Howard headlining this year\u2019s festival is Scott Caradine<\/strong>, owner of beloved Oxford restaurant and music venue Proud Larry\u2019s<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m thrilled about having Brittany on the lineup,\u201d said Caradine. \u201cI think watching her progress from Alabama Shakes to making her own music and doing things on her own terms has been really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Howard\u2019s new album What Now<\/em><\/strong>, released earlier this year, has received rave reviews, and continues the upward trajectory of her career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Howard famously has an intriguing backstory: she grew up in a junkyard, where she also enjoyed the company of various \u201cbarn animals,\u201d as she recently shared with the audience of the Kelly Clarkson Show<\/em>. She also shared that she found herself feeling \u201cblue\u201d after having to cancel the previous album tour due to the global pandemic, as did many other touring musicians. Howard\u2019s remedy was to buckle down and write new music, which she comically did in a children\u2019s bedroom of a rental home, while surrounded by \u201cAsian-inspired furniture and also racing cars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caradine described Howard\u2019s new record as \u201ca wide range of funk, soul, and rock, with some elements of jazz.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although perhaps not as catered to local musicians as in the days of yore, this year\u2019s lineup may have more ties to the area than one might assume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n International blues\/rock phenomenon Christone \u201cKingfish\u201d Ingram<\/strong> grew up a little ways down the road, in Clarksdale, Mississippi<\/strong>, cutting his teeth at actor Morgan Freeman\u2019s Ground Zero Blues Club, and the famous Red\u2019s Lounge, which are both visited by many Lafayette County residents for multiple annual events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caradine referred to Kingfish as an \u201cambassador of Mississippi and the blues all over the world,\u201d who hasn\u2019t played locally in a few years \u201cbecause he\u2019s been out doing it everywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kingfish\u2019s second album 662<\/em><\/strong> earned him a GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Blues album and has also won each of the ten Blues Music Awards nominations received\u200a\u2014\u200aon top of eleven Living Blues Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe love the blues around here,\u201d said Caradine. \u201cI think people will be really excited to come see him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The local ties continue with another singer-songwriter\/guitarist, and return-performer Charlie Mars<\/strong>, who has spent much of his days residing in Lafayette and Yalobusha Counties, and has appeared on Austin City Limits<\/em>, the longest running music series in television history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ties to the legends of the North Mississippi blues community don\u2019t get any stronger than Kenny Brown<\/strong>, who has recorded and performed shows around Oxford for decades and appears on many of the greatest Mississippi Hill Country Blues albums ever recorded, including with late-greats R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brown continues to reach higher plateaus year-after-year, having recently played appearances as well as recorded with world-famous rock group The Black Keys, and Hank Williams, Jr., and Robert Finley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brown is also cofounder of the annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic<\/strong> with wife Sara, which this year falls on June 28\u201329. Kenny will kick off the Saturday festivities with a 10 am set. The return of the morning slot (as the festival originally was) is an added treat for goers this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another band on the lineup with local ties is Bass Drum of Death<\/strong>, with bandleader John Barrett<\/strong> originally hailing from Oxford, before residing in New York City for some time and then returning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that it\u2019s pretty special that we\u2019ve got local bands that have enough going on musically, and globally, that they make an impact on our festival here in Oxford,\u201d said Caradine. \u201cI think that the festival\u2019s going to be really cool for that aspect\u2026that we\u2019ve got some local bands on there that have real traction all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other Saturday acts include Billy Allen<\/strong> & The Pollies,<\/strong> who joined up after some time working as occasional studio musicians at the legendary Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama; Jaime Wyatt<\/strong>, who has been described as \u201cone of the most exciting and skillful storytellers working today\u201d; and New Orleans R&B-tinged Neal Francis<\/strong>, who was dubbed by BBC Radio 6 to be the reincarnation of Allen Toussaint,\u201d a little later at 5:30 pm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year also marks the third year for the Friday night country music series, which Caradine is also very pleased about, after having famous Arkansan singer\/songwriter, Ashley McBryde<\/strong> perform in \u201823.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teenage guitar-slinging phenom Grace Bowers<\/strong>, who has been gathering acclaim from a laundry list of famous musicians since wooing a capacity crowd at last year\u2019s Newport Folk Festival, begins the free live music at 6 pm on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe\u2019ll be one of those people that five or ten years from now we\u2019re gonna go, \u2018wow, remember when she played at Double Decker in that early Friday slot?\u2019\u201d said Caradine of the Gibson guitar-endorsed player. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be one of those things\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s followed by another youthful yet seasoned performer, 23-year-old Conner Smith<\/strong>, who has been described as \u201cmatching a honeyed vocal to propulsive hints of bluegrass and the warmth of \u201890s Country,\u201d with \u201can instant-classic sound infused with riveting modern appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caradine described Conner Smith as a \u201cyoung, up and coming country artist with some real traction on the radio, which enables us to keep some of that radio familiarity with country music on the bill, while still doing something different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Friday country series will conclude with Flatland Cavalry<\/strong>, who will surely delight festival goers with their distinctly West Texas Panhandle sound, having started out in the very musically storied town of Lubbock<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For festival goers who can stick it out for the Saturday night headliner Brittany Howard, Farris said there will be a \u201cnew component\u201d that will occur right before Howard begins. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a surprise,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVisit Oxford is more of a marketing organization, although we do put on events from time to time it\u2019s not kind of our main gig,\u201d said Ferris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She called the festival \u201ca lot of fun\u201d to help put together, mainly because of how it\u2019s a vehicle to market the City of Oxford \u201cin a really big public way. To me it just has all the things that we\u2019re promoting year round about Oxford, which is a very community-driven place,\u201d said Ferris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is kind of a big community party, and we bring in the arts aspect\u200a\u2014\u200awhich we thrive in here in the arts\u200a\u2014\u200awhether it\u2019s musical or visual arts. I think we\u2019re celebrating all the things fun about Oxford. We\u2019re bringing it all together with the community behind it, and the students and the university\u2026in a special place, in the heart of the city. It\u2019s really special and there\u2019s a reason why it\u2019s award-winning. And there\u2019s a reason why when [people] think of Oxford, they think of Double Decker Arts Festival and its great legacy. We\u2019re honored to carry it on here at the tourism office and Visit Oxford. It\u2019s been 27 years, which is amazing. Not a lot of festivals can say that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caradine, whose restaurant\/music venue was only in its infancy when the festival started, is also impressed by its almost-three-decade endurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that each time we have seen the festival grow\u2026and it\u2019s done that for years,\u201d said Caradine. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve had more sponsorships and more interest in what seems like really big crowds. We want to try to think outside the box a little bit; we want to do things that are fresh and different but at the same time keep things that people know and love, and connect with in Mississippi.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The annual Double Decker Arts Fest continues to bring a balanced variety to suit all tastes and ages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123909,"featured_media":138653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[27451,283,284,28488,3838,1535,28405,28484,286,2310,6324,3470,28490,8978,4272,6422,14,28485,8067,28491,28489,7491,28483,2022,28486,1536,26211,2882,435,7901,17646,19037,256,15701,28492,5,966,28487,4536,3818,397,7067,4,16063,24919,9903,6688,792,4162,655,6424],"class_list":["post-138649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-double-decker-2012","tag-27451","tag-alabama","tag-alabama-shakes","tag-ashley-mcbryde","tag-athens","tag-bass-drum-of-death","tag-best-small-college-town","tag-billy-allen-the-pollies","tag-brittany-howard","tag-charlie-mars","tag-christone-kingfish-ingram","tag-clarksdale","tag-conner-smith","tag-davis-coen","tag-double-decker","tag-double-decker-arts-festival","tag-double-decker-festival","tag-fame-recording-studios","tag-festivals","tag-flatland-cavalry","tag-grace-bowers","tag-ground-zero-blues-club","tag-hank-williams-jr","tag-hill-country-blues","tag-jaime-wyatt","tag-john-barrett","tag-jules-mikell","tag-keith-carter","tag-kenny-brown","tag-kingfish","tag-kinney-ferris","tag-kirk-purdom","tag-lafayette-county","tag-lane-kiffin","tag-lubbock","tag-mississippi","tag-morgan-freeman","tag-neal-francis","tag-new-york-city","tag-north-mississippi","tag-north-mississippi-hill-country-picnic","tag-ole-miss","tag-oxford","tag-proud-larrys-4","tag-reds-lounge-3","tag-robert-finley","tag-sara-brown","tag-texas","tag-the-black-keys","tag-university-of-mississippi","tag-visit-oxford"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Jules-w-o-DoubleDecker-Poster-750.jpg?fit=750%2C750&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123909"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138649"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138685,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138649\/revisions\/138685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Kinney-Emma-Leann-Joey_Brent-750.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s much about the music<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nFriday night country kickoff<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nStick around the festival for a surprise<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"