On April 23-26, MerleFest will be held on the grounds of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro. The annual festival gathers devotees and artists of bluegrass, folk and traditional music from across the country.
The 2026 lineup of artists includes Alison Krauss & Union Station, Old Crow Medicine Show, Charles Wesley Godwin, Blackberry Smoke, Molly Tuttle, Railroad Earth, The Infamous Stringdusters and Joy Oladokun.
MerleFest was founded in 1988 by Deep Gap-based folk musician Doc Watson as a fundraiser for Wilkes Community College. The event is also a tribute to his son Merle Watson, who unexpectedly died in a tractor accident in 1985 at 35 years old.
As the primary fundraiser for the WCC Foundation, MerleFest has brought wealth and stability to Wilkes Community College. According to their website, WCC uses funds from MerleFest for scholarships, campus projects and education.
Julie Mullis, a former professor at WCC, has seen the positive effect MerleFest has had on the campus.
“A lot of the money that comes from holding the festival goes back into the grounds,”
Mullis said. “It’s a cushion for hard times.”
Resources from MerleFest have also been used to fund projects like WCC’s Garden of the Senses, whose braille-labeled plants help visually-impaired visitors, such as Doc Watson, experience nature.
Since its founding 38 years ago, the festival has grown into one of the largest folk music festivals in the world. MerleFest has hosted numerous high-profile performers, including Willie Nelson, John Prine, The Avett Brothers and Dolly Parton.
The variety of MerleFest’s performers reflects the musical values of Doc Watson. He believed folk music performance did not need to follow strict thematic rules, instead adapting to whatever the moment called for.
“When Merle and I started out we called our music ‘traditional plus,’ meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play,” reads a quote from Doc Watson on the MerleFest website. “Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is ‘traditional plus.’”
In this spirit, MerleFest attracts fans of both traditional bluegrass music and of modern jam bands, converging to form a one-of-a-kind crowd.
“It draws a really interesting dichotomy of acid-dropping hippies and traditional bluegrass music,” Mullis said. “It’s interesting watching those two groups watch one another.”
Doc Watson’s solo concerts were more intimate than MerleFest. Paul Haas, a longtime Boone resident who saw Doc Watson perform in the early 2000s, recalled the quiet setup and devoted fans.
“It was nice and mellow,” Haas said. “There was not a lot of drinking or partying; they were there for Doc Watson.”
As a Watauga County native, Doc Watson’s legacy and musical style have become inseparable from Boone’s local culture and music.
“It’s the identity of this place,” said Sarah Foti, an employee at Noble Kava, a tea shop and performance venue for many local bluegrass musicians. “It’s tied into the landscape and history. Bluegrass is part of the personality of these mountains. It tells stories and creates new stories. We’re lucky to have a music scene like this because a lot of places don’t have a local sound or folk music.”
General admission tickets for MerleFest start at $90 for the Thursday and Sunday shows and $105 for the Friday and Saturday shows.
