(Walnut Valley Festival: Not a secret anymore)

Story and photos by Jason Rupp and Carla Marie Rupp

The magical, old-fashioned town of Winfield has celebrated over 150 years since its founding and now hosts over 12,000 people at its annual bluegrass music festival event. It started over 50 years ago, originally just to host a guitar competition, but has kept growing yearly. “Happy Winfield!” was the greeting we heard often, usually with a hug, at one of our favorite festivals: The Walnut Valley Festival. This open-air music festival is located along the beautiful Walnut River of Winfield in Kansas (the center-most state of the United States). Many people go every year even flying around the world for it as we did – all the way from Thailand! It has a huge campground with many zones, making up communities of campers that have fun rituals such as fancy dress, barbecue cook-offs, even offering cocktails to people passing by and eating together by the camp fire. They jam into the night. Someone starts a song and the rest follow and play or sing along.

Everyone is happy to be in “Pickers Paradise,” a nickname for the festival. People are genuinely happy and friendly and pop-up performances in the campgrounds are plentiful. There are also contest stages with international competitions for a variety of instruments such as autoharp, guitar, fiddle, banjo and mandolin. Once you’ve been to this Winfield festival, it’s normal that you always want to go back, no matter how far away you are. It’s like home to many who attend.“If you don’t go, you don’t know,” says one “bluegrasser” and old-time style musician Arch Stanton, who did clogging (a type of dance) and played percussion instruments in Catgut String Band.

Bluegrass is a particular form of American music that you hear a lot of at the Walnut Valley Festival. It can be fast and peppy, or slow and moody with songs that tell stories, happy, or sometimes sad. Musicians here know the bluegrass standard tunes by heart e.g. “Playing it by ear” and also play, American cowboy, gospel, folk, Western swing or even Celtic music.The National Flat-Picking Guitar Championship and autoharp contest draw highly-skilled contestants. Recent festival entertainers include Bing Futch (mountain dulcimer, ukulele and Native American flute), Bebe Gambetta, The Haymakers band, Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band, the Rick Farris Band, Front Porch, Becky Buller, Barry Patton, Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley, John McCutcheon, Linda Tilton (on ukulele), Socks in the Frying Pan, The Steel Wheels band, The Tina Bergmann and Bryan Thomas duo and Little Big Twang. We really like local Kansas bands: 80 Proof Alice, Pretend Friend, and Dead End Strings.Some big names who got their start here are Doc Watson, Dixie Chicks, Byron Berline, and Alison Krauss. Allison Krauss first had a hit with the song “When You Say Nothing At All,” which was famously covered by Ronan Keating for the movie Notting Hill movie and which we all sang along with when he headlined the Pattaya International Jazz Festival last month.

We spent one evening on comfortable camping chairs, eating delicious homemade food while fiddlers and guitar players walked by and stopped to serenade us with songs. Our nostalgic memories go way back with the Walnut Valley Festival. We went to it when Jason was a little boy. It’s a big “music party,” and people roam around the festival to listen at the varied stages. You can also find arts and crafts booths, food and drink vendors and places to buy gear and musical instruments. Some visitors just come for the day, others attend the four-day event Thursday through Sunday. On Friday and Saturday, there is a music camp for children and also Feisty Kids Camp with plenty of activities.

Winfield’s Walnut Valley Festival is professionally-run, quirky and has unusual fancy dress parades..

Motels get booked up early, but some attendees find accommodation in Wichita or Ark City, but a lot of the fun is staying onsite, waking up in Winfield, drinking coffee and eating breakfast listening to the music.We joined our cousins Jonathan and Suzanne who have their own golf cart but these can also be rented to roam around the festival. One night it came in handy for the Rupp cousins to watch the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou” which famously stars George Clooney and features bluegrass music. It is shown annually on Stage 5 in Pecan Grove..

The Walnut Valley Association office is on Main Street Winfield and the festival website (wvfest.com) includes great information. Plus you can follow the Facebook groups of Walnut Valley Festival and Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival Fans. The new official 53^rd Walnut Valley Festival dates are Sept. 17-21, 2025. So plan ahead, come a few days early and remember you don’t need to play an instrument to have fun – it just helps to be music lovers as we are. Jason Rupp and Carla Marie Rupp are freelance travel journalists based in New York City and Pattaya, Thailand. Their YouTube channel is Jason Rupp: Travel & Pamper. They enjoy sharing their travels for Discover Pattaya magazine.