Beyond Genre: Bourbon & Beyond 2025 Nails The Recipe For A Good Old Fashioned Festival [Review]

Bourbon & Beyond returned to Louisville, KY’s Kentucky Exposition Center earlier this month for its 2025 edition headlined by Phish, Noah Kahan, Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson, The Lumineers, Jack White, Benson Boone, Alabama Shakes, Cage The Elephant, Khruangbin, Megan Moroney, Joe Bonamassa, Vance Joy, Goo Goo Dolls, and scores of other high-profile names that would likely take the top line of any other major music festival’s poster.

The massive scale of Bourbon & Beyond has always been one of its main selling points—the Danny Wimmer Presents event is billed as the “world’s largest bourbon, food, and music festival”—and this year’s seventh edition upped the ante even further, doubling the festival’s footprint and fielding its biggest lineup to date.

Still, despite the size and stature of the event—it was named Music Festival of the Year (Global, Over 30,000 Attendance) at this year’s Pollstar Awards—Bourbon & Beyond managed to deliver on all fronts.

Below, check out a roundup of some of the most notable storylines from the 2025 edition of Bourbon & Beyond. Scroll down to the bottom of this article to view daily photo galleries from the event via the festival’s photo team.

Table of Contents

–Beyond Genre: A Good Old Fashioned Festival
–Set Up For Success
–Phish Out of Water
–Starr’s Out
–Sit-Ins & Drop-Bys
–Daily Photo Galleries

Beyond Genre – A Good Old Fashioned Festival

How do you categorize the kind of music on offer at Bourbon & Beyond? That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s genuinely tricky to pin down.

The 120-artist roster featured hit-makers, pop idols, cultural icons, cult heroes, forgotten favorites, fresh faces, and touring stalwarts spanning several generations. Rock and roll, blues, folk, Americana, alternative, jam, pop, country, and more had a seat at the table—a notably wide sprawl in an era when many festivals have shifted toward genre-specific and artist-focused models—yet none of those genre labels quite capture the unique cross-section of music at Bourbon & Beyond. (For contrast, look at Danny Wimmer Presents’ other Louisville event, Louder Than Life, which took place the following weekend and can be succinctly labeled as a metal/hard rock festival.)

Still, the outwardly disparate 2025 Bourbon & Beyond lineup felt united by some unspoken thread. Maybe, that connection was some measure of “other-ness”—so many of these acts have consistently eluded and precluded classification, forging careers on the fringes of genres.

Country? Sure, there’s country, from 2024 CMA New Artist of the Year Megan Moroney on Sunday to soulful Alabama storytellers Muscadine Bloodline or grizzled Virginia songstress Morgan Wade on Saturday. Saturday night’s headliner, Kentucky native Sturgill Simpson, was a country act in theory, but he’d tell you that his name is actually Johnny Blue Skies and his band is actually a rock ‘n’ roll band. Anyone who caught his 150-minute steamroller of a performance would likely agree, even if it was a different approach to rock ‘n’ roll than the one showcased right before him by Jack White, whose bombastic brand of garage-rock is really rooted in the blues, though it sounds largely different from someone like blues lifer Joe Bonamassa, who played on Friday…

And don’t let Johnny Blue Skies know that he might actually be a jam band—at least not when the gold-standard jam band, Phish, is headlining with two sets on Friday night and only one other act on the bill (Baltimore-based stalwarts Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, who played to an enormous crowd on Friday afternoon) really checks that box. But that topic shouldn’t be hard to avoid, since the members of Phish seemed less keen on carrying the Bourbon & Beyond “jam band” banner and more interested in sampling its alt- and indie-rock offerings, whether it was Trey Anastasio arriving early to catch Waxahatchee and TV On The Radio on Thursday or Mike Gordon joining in with Guster and Iron & Wine for a Fleetwood Mac cover on Friday.

 

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You might have come for someone specific, but with such a wealth of talent and influence at play at a massive scale, the best moments of the weekend often came from beyond pre-planned itineraries. Maybe you meant to get to Phish early to hold down a good spot but wound up recalling just how much Gavin DeGraw‘s music soundtracked your adolescence with a hot air balloon, ascending planes, and an orange sunset as the backdrop—then missing the start of Phish entirely when NOLA favorites Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue served up the second surprising Ozzy Osbourne homage in as many sets via a brassed-out “Iron Man”. (Gavin’s brief solo piano “War Pigs”/ “Changes” medley was solid, too.)

You may have gone into Thursday night really looking forward to a Benson Boone backflip or the reunited Alabama Shakes and left raving about Hall of Fame pop-rock power couple Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo taking “Heartbreaker” through Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and back again to incendiary effect…

[Photo: Nathan Zucker – Alabama Shakes at Bourbon & Beyond, 9/11/25]

It’s dizzying, for sure—or maybe that’s just your second Angel’s Envy old fashioned of the afternoon—but across the board, the music at Bourbon & Beyond is music that thrives when the stakes are super-sized, music that conveys emotion with grandeur, that makes you feel things, evokes memories of “the good old days” and files today’s events alongside them.

In truth, Bourbon & Beyond’s underlying concept outranks any particular type of music. By catering to bourbon-drinkers (read: more refined, likely older, definitely ready to party) and followers of music that confuses conventional labels (the “beyonds,” if you will) on a massive (and increasingly rare) scale, Bourbon & Beyond has become a monolith in today’s festival landscape: A big, eclectic, mainstream festival for the seasoned music-lover that mixes distinct ingredients just right and goes down as smoothly a top-shelf bourbon cocktail. It’s a good old fashioned music festival. Pun intended.

[Photo: Sam Shapiro – Bourbon & Beyond from above, 9/11/25]

Set Up for Success

Virtually every aspect of the seventh edition of Bourbon & Beyond was larger in scale than in previous years. For 2025, Bourbon & Beyond organizers doubled the square footage of past years’ footprints, expanding upon its dual side-by-side stages (main stages Oak and Barrel on one end of the grounds and, B stages 100 Proof and Revival on the other—optimal for mobility between performance areas and smooth artist change-overs) with additional activations, a sliding scale of VIP amenities, and countless high-end bourbon cocktails on offer. Get a little hot during the day? Head over to the Bluegrass Situation Stage for some shade and you might just catch a surprise highlight of the weekend while you’re at it (two words: Yachtley Crew).

Plus, this year’s expanded Bourbon & Beyond footprint included the Expo Center’s adjacent Kentucky Kingdom amusement park and offered all festival attendees complimentary admission. Do I know anyone who actually took advantage? Well, no—it felt aspirational, like morning festy yoga—but knowing you could was exciting in itself. Nothing says “festival” like a Ferris wheel in the distance. Bonus points when there’s a roller coaster, too.

[Photo: Steve Thrasher – Vance Joy at Bourbon & Beyond, 9/13/25]

Phish Out of Water

Phish headlining this year’s Bourbon & Beyond was big for the band, its fans, and Bourbon & Beyond alike. Just like large festivals are part of Phish’s DNA (the band has thrown 11 of its own curated festivals over the last two decades), Phish is part of the DNA of virtually every large-scale, multi-genre festival (its festivals famously inspired the creators of mega-fests like Bonnaroo, the only still-operating, non-Phish festival to have hosted the band in a decade). Wind time back to the turn of the century and you’ll find Bourbon & Beyond among heavyweights like New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Austin City Limits, Outside Lands, and LOCKN’ on the short list of festivals visited by the famously selective jam quartet.

For many of Phish’s fervent followers, “non-Phish festival sets” carry a similar disclaimer: temper your expectations at the door (i.e. A Phish show wedged in the middle of a multi-genre festival will never feel quite as immersive as one of the Phish-only festivals the band famously throws itself). On paper, Phish’s two-set Bourbon & Beyond debut may have looked heavy on crowd-pleasers and light on rare tunes and big surprises, but in actuality, it was outstanding.

For more than a few reasons, Phish at Bourbon & Beyond couldn’t have been a better fit. If you actually want to read those reasons, revisit our full recap of Phish’s B&B appearance here.

Phish – “Chalk Dust Torture” -> “Light” [Pro-Shot] – Bourbon & Beyond – 9/12/25

Starr’s Out

The density of star power on the Bourbon & Beyond lineup was most glaring as you worked down the lineup to the mid-card (why yes, that is Sir Ringo Starr, Beatle and living legend of pop culture, peace, and love, on the fourth line of the poster). Oh, and his All-Starr backing band? That billing is no exaggeration, and Ringo was far from the only legend on that Saturday afternoon set. In addition to splitting time on drums, vocals, and peace signs for a signature selection of Beatles songs, Ringo played side-man as Toto’s Steve Lukather ripped “Rosanna” and “Hold The Line”, Men at Work’s Colin Hay sang “Down Under”, and Average White Band’s Hamish Stuart guided the funk through “Pickin’ Up The Pieces”, with Warren Ham, Buck Johnson, and Gregg Bissonette also in tow.

Maybe you thought you were getting a “cute” appearance by the funny little guy from Liverpool, but what fans on Saturday got was a diverse showcase of timeless hits written by the decorated musicians on stage—guys who seemed just as giddy as the crowd to be spending an afternoon in Kentucky with Ringo Starr.

[Photo: Steve Thrasher – Ringo Starr at Bourbon & Beyond, 9/13/25]

For the big finale, Ringo was joined by a crew of additional All-Starrs including Jack White and his band, Sammy Rae of Sammy Rae & The Friends, and more for a cathartic “With a Little Help From My Friends” punctuated by a brief, hopeful chorus of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance”.

Louisville native and My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, who did not perform at this year’s Bourbon & Beyond but attended as a fan, best summed up the weight of the moment. After “vibing out with [Ringo] for a few fun moments backstage,” James explained in an Instagram post, he went “out in the crowd to sing along with everyone and laugh and cry tears of joy as he filled the air in Louisville with his beautiful spirit voice and amazing drumming that has been the foundation to so much of the soundtrack of our lives.”

What he said. Thank you, Ringo. Peace and love.

 

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Sit-Ins & Drop-Bys

There were bound to be some strong sit-ins with a lineup this deep. Jack White and company with Ringo was obviously a big one, as was Mike Gordon and Iron & Wine with Guster. Honorable mention on the sit-in list includes (in no particular order): Derek Trucks (!), on site to push his Ass Pocket Whiskey with a panel at the Fork & Flask Stage, joining The Lumineers for Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”; Foreigner, in its last festival performance with vocalist Kelly Hansen, welcoming a local choir for “I Want to Know What Live Is”; Lake Street Dive bringing up Lawrence for Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl”; or Sunday closer Noah Kahan teaming up with Nathaniel Rateliff on “Northern Attitude”.

The Lumineers w/ Derek Trucks – “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (Bob Dylan) – 9/11/25

[Video: Garrett Strand]

Noah Kahan w/ Nathaniel Rateliff – “Northern Attitude” – 9/14/25

[Video: Jeff B]

Photo Galleries

Below, view daily photo galleries from the 2025 event courtesy of Bourbon & Beyond photographers Jake Mulka, Steve Thrasher, Nathan Zucker, Lexie Alley, and Austin Cooper.

Save the Date

Danny Wimmer Presents announced this week that the next edition of Bourbon & Beyond will return to Louisville on a new weekend, September 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th. That means it will take place the weekend after Louder Than Life 2026, rather than the week before, as it was in 2025. To sign up for updates on Bourbon & Beyond 2026, head here.