Like most every other music festival, Nelsonville Music Festival was forced to take its talents online last year. The annual gathering in Southeast Ohio has become a pillar of the Appalachian community since beginning in 2005 and brings much-needed resources and attention to Stuart’s Opera House, a musical institution in the area surrounding Ohio University in Athens for over 125 years.
With a small, local festival like NMF, community is at the forefront of the mission. That’s why it was all the more special that Caamp returned to headline the 2020 Virtual Nelsonville Music Festival. Originally bred out of nearby Columbus, OH, the original duo of Evan Westfall and Taylor Meier made a name for themselves playing around the coffee shops and bars that populate nearby Ohio University. Since escaping Athens barely five years ago, the group has gone on to garner national success and rack up millions of monthly listeners on Spotify—a far cry from playing open mics for free on Wednesday nights.
Related: Caamp Share Ecologically-Inspired “Fall, Fall, Fall” Video [Watch]
From the banks of Dow Lake in the serene Strouds Run State Park, Caamp delivered a half-hour headlining performance of their celebrated catalog with plenty of memories of Athens, OH peppered in. Beginning with “Penny, Heads Up”, the now-expanded Caamp lineup which includes Matt Vinson on bass, Caamp put on the mellow, folk-tinged vibrations that made them a favorite of the roots-leaning collegiate crowd and beyond. The band wove through its ever-expanding catalog with more recent songs like “Books” and “Officer Of Love” alongside throwbacks to Caamp’s early days in Athens with “Misty” and their first regional hit, “Ohio”.
Watch Caamp’s full performance from Virtual Nelsonville Music Festival 2020.
Caamp – Virtual Nelsonville Music Festival
[Video: stuartsoperahouse]