Note: Authored by David Menconi, this piece has been produced in partnership with Raleigh Arts. Menconi's latest book, "Oh, Didn't They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music," was published in the fall of 2023 by University of North Carolina Press. His podcast, Carolina Calling, explores the history of the Tar Heel State through music.

A year after the International Bluegrass Music Association ended its Raleigh festival era, the city has officially unveiled plans for a replacement festival. Coming the weekend of October 3-4, 2025, will be the inaugural Raleigh Wide Open Music Festival--produced by PineCone (Piedmont Council of Traditional Music), and sponsored by PNC Bank.

Wide Open Raleigh replaces the IBMA festival, known for many years as Wide Open Bluegrass. Last year’s IBMA event concluded a highly successful 12-year run in Raleigh, where it drew six-figure crowds many years. IBMA has since moved its annual business conference and festival to Chattanooga, Tenn..

“We are proud of ‘Raleigh Wide Open’ as a connector to where this whole thing began for the city,” says PineCone executive director David Brower. “We wanted to connect to the legacy of celebrating downtown’s reopening, and the reopening of Fayetteville St. Post-Covid, it seems like we’ve needed another reopening. So we mean to proclaim that downtown Raleigh is, once again, wide open.”

PineCone has released the preliminary lineup for the free street festival part of the program, a total of almost three-dozen acts. The street festival will happen along the same Fayetteville St. corridor between City Plaza and the State Capitol, with a half-dozen free stages set up on the streets. Artist lineups for the ticketed portion of the festival at Red Hat Amphitheater will be announced later in the summer.

The street festival lineup features a lot of familiar names from IBMA festivals in years past, including Balsam Range (multiple winner of IBMA’s “Entertainer of the Year” award), North Carolina music ambassador Jim Lauderdale and Dom Flemons from Carolina Chocolate Drops. The program also has Americana-leaning acts from beyond bluegrass, like the Texas Southern soul band Shinyribs in an expanded 15-piece lineup, and North Carolina polyglot singer/songwriter Sonny Miles.

“The bottom line is we’ll have all the elements we’ve enjoyed for the last 12 years with some new twists,” says Brower. “It will be wide open with music on every corner, good food, arts, crafts, a lot of smiling faces. The whole thing is designed to be something that three generations of a single family can enjoy together. You’ll be able to walk through and feel an awful lot of what you’ve seen and enjoyed in years past, a similar vibe.”

One year after Hurricane Helene ravaged Western North Carolina, Raleigh Wide Open’s lineup will have a special emphasis on acts from the 26 counties most affected by the storm. New wrinkles this year include a Friday-morning “Field Trip Festival” program, for students at schools in the downtown area to come sample. And gospel will be a key part of the artist lineup, presented in partnership with the North Carolina Folklife Institute.

“That will help toward our goal of putting on a festival reflecting the entire community,” says Brower. “There’s a lot of repertoire in common between Black church music and the bluegrass gospel tradition. We’re trying to present a cultural event rooted in community, which will be fun and economically accessible. There’s no financial barriers to the street festival stages up and down Fayetteville St., which is why we’re announcing the free stuff first.”

Preliminary street-festival artist lineup for 2025 Raleigh Wide Open:

• A Nest of Singing Birds
• Balsam Range
• Big Fat Gap
• Blue Cactus
• Cabin Creature
• Carolina Bluegrass
• Charly Lowry
• Chris Johnson & Freedom
• Dom Flemons
• Earl White String Band
• Gospel Jubilators
• The Gravy Boys
• Hank Pattie and the Current
• Holler Choir
• Jalessa Cade
• Jason Carter
• Jim Lauderdale
• Joseph Decosimo
• Kingdon United Voices
• Legacy Chorale
• The Loblollies
• Nixon, Blevins, Williams
• Omar Ruiz-Lopez
• Palmyra
• Shinyribs
• Sonny Miles
• Stillhouse Junkies
• Sunny War
• Susto String Band
• Town Mountain
• Tray Wellington Band
• Unspoken Tradition
• Williamson Brothers