The Wayne Henderson Festival Ends After 30 Years
Henderson Reflects on Its Long Run
Photos by Derek Halsey
Southwest Virginia’s Wayne Henderson happens to be one of the most famous guitar builders in the world. He has also been one of the best fingerpick guitarists in the country for many years. And yet, for the majority of his amazing career, Henderson has lived in the same remote section of the Blue Ridge Mountains that he was raised in, Grayson County, Virginia.
Living in an unincorporated town of seven people called Rugby, Henderson happily resides in a rural and beautiful place, located just up the hill from the New River, the second oldest river on the surface of the planet, and within ten miles of the Western North Carolina border. The North Carolina connection is important, as that part of the state is not only the source of the New River, it also means that the National Heritage Award winner lived just 40 miles from Boone and Deep Gap, North Carolina, the home of his late and great friend Doc Watson.
Thirty years ago, Henderson, his family, friends and interested festival sponsors chose the nearby Grayson Highlands State Park to be the location of the first-ever Wayne Henderson Festival and Guitar Contest. For three decades, the festival always happened on the third Saturday in June, and the last of those wonderful one-day events took place on June 15, 2024.
The goal of the Wayne Henderson Festival has always been to create a family-friendly live music gathering that highlighted both national and regional music acts and to host a first class guitar contest, all the while raising money for scholarships for young people who are learning to play traditional Appalachian music. Over these last three decades, the event has raised over $500,000 for the cause.
At this year’s Wayne Henderson Festival finale’, the stage performers included the IBMA Award-winning band The Gibson Brothers, Wilkes County-based musician Presley Barker, who won the Wayne Henderson Guitar Competition years ago, the legendary Kruger Brothers band, and the Hawaiian slack key guitar style master L.T. Smooth.
For many attendees, the heart of the festival is the acclaimed Wayne Henderson Guitar Competition, featuring 20 top musicians going for the title. What is special about this particular contest is that the winner gets a brand new Wayne Henderson guitar. Known worldwide as a coveted hand-made instrument, a quick look at the sale price of used Henderson guitars finds a minimum cost of $18,000 with some vintage models having a $50,000-plus price tag on them.
Henderson also routinely traded one of his finely-built guitars to many national acts over the years in exchange for their performance at his festival. That happened at this past June when country star Brad Paisley made a surprise appearance at the Grayson Highlands event, playing with Henderson, and friends, to end the day.
Before Paisley walked onstage on that Saturday afternoon, Henderson addressed the crowd. “I have made guitars for folks like Vince Gill, Roseanne Cash and others, and I’d miss somebody if I tried to list them all, but these folks could be playing anywhere in the world right now, if they wanted to,” said Henderson. “They could be playing at Carnegie Hall or on the Grand Ole Opry, but out of the goodness of their heart, they will come to honor our little festival and what we do with the money, and it helps us out a lot so much. They have to be pretty nice folks to want to do that, and as for this fellow, I have met him and know him enough to know that is exactly what he is. So please give a hand to a huge star, here comes Brad Paisley.”
As Paisley performs with Henderson and his band, he says, “Thanks for having me as I am honored to get to pick with this legend, who is the man that is the most important acoustic guitar builder of our lifetime, I think, and just a wonderful human being. Thanks for having me. God bless Wayne Henderson. How about it?”
The Gibson Brothers, the multi-IBMA Award winners from upstate New York, have played at the Wayne Henderson Festival multiple times over the years, and as a result, both Eric and Leigh Gibson have two custom-made Henderson guitars each for their collection. They viewed it as an honor to be asked to play at the last festival in June.
“I had heard of Wayne Henderson going back to the 1990s because we were on the same Hay Holler record label,” said Eric Gibson. “I knew him as a great guitar player, but my brother Leigh was also aware of him as a guitar builder. But, that fact eluded me and I didn’t know much about his luthier skills back then. Then, fast forward to the early 2,000s and a doctor in Vermont, who was a friend of ours, he asked me if I wanted to play his Henderson guitar onstage, even though I didn’t know anything about it. So, I have the guitar at the show and I leaned it up against the back of the stage and my brother yells at me, ‘What are you doing? Do you know how expensive those things are?’ I said, ‘No.’ I thought I was doing a favor for the doctor, when actually, he was doing me a favor. I had no idea that there was a forever waiting list for these instruments. It was a great guitar, but I did not realize I was playing something that was so dear to so many people.”
The Gibson Brothers first played Henderson’s festival 12 years ago. “We played at his festival in 2012 and he gave both Leigh and me an HD-28 style guitar, and they are gorgeous,” said Gibson. “When we came back to play at the festival six years later, he offered to make us each a guitar yet again. So, we asked if he could make us a couple of sunburst D-18s and that is the one that I play all of the time now, and Leigh plays his HD-28 all of the time.”
The Gibson Brothers met Henderson in Washington State years ago during Wintergrass, before they played their inaugural Henderson Festival, and they have been friends since then. “It is so nice to meet somebody who is at the top of his game, yet he is humble about it,” said Gibson. “I have never heard him brag about himself. We just love that guy, and I am thankful that we even got to know him, and very thankful to have his guitar because that is what we play. And, it was an honor to play at his last festival, because it was truly a wonderful event. The festival was so laid back and you felt the love from Wayne has for us showing up, and you can see the love that Wayne has for all of the guitar pickers who show up as well. We just hope that he keeps on building instruments as that is who he is.”
Vince Gill had every intent of making it to Henderson’s final gathering when he was planning his tour schedule for 2024. His appearance there several years ago proved to be enjoyable and down to earth, and Gill walked away with a coveted new guitar as well.
Gill also tours as a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group The Eagles, however, and they booked a tour of Europe during the same time as the Wayne Henderson Festival. Still, Gill wanted to be a part of this article and that is why he called to do an interview from Amsterdam, Netherlands. “About ten years or so ago, Wayne got a hold of me and said, ‘Vince, I put on a festival here near my home and I’ll build you whatever kind of guitar that you want if you will come and play.’ I said, ‘Deal.’ I am not sure he was happy about it, but I asked him to make a sunburst D-45. He said, ‘I hate doing pearl work, but if that is what you want, I’ll do it.’ And, it is a beauty. When I was a kid, the only shade top D-45 was owned by a man named Don Teeter in Oklahoma City (who famously wrote two books about acoustic guitar repair) and I got to play that guitar when I was a kid and I was always mesmerized by it. So, since there was only one of them that I knew if, it sounded like a neat idea to ask for one.”
Henderson took on the challenge and Gill loves the instrument that was placed in his hands. “It is a monster,” said Gill. “He gave it to me and I played it at his festival, and I had a ball. Wayne has a great sister out east and she stays in touch and let’s me know how everything is going with the family. I admire that Wayne stayed in his little hometown as well. It is a testament to hard work. I have always noticed that there are people that would get a guitar from him or buy one from him and they flip it. They buy one from him for a few thousand bucks and they will sell it for a lot more, and that doesn’t seem right to me.”
As for Wayne Henderson himself, I spoke to him right before his last-ever festival began and he was honest about the bittersweet reality of the situation. “I’m terribly sad that this will be the last festival, because it has been a really good event and we’ve always been successful,” said Henderson. “But, the truth is that all of us who run it are getting old. Sometimes, I have to build three guitars or more just to put the festival on and that is a lot of work. My cousin Becky Ward is the President of the festival and she is absolutely wonderful, but she is getting to the point where she will not be able to do it anymore as well, and I’d be absolutely ruined without her. Running a festival is very hard work and you have to worry about it all year long. Then, when it gets close to festival time, we make ourselves sick over the weather, which you can do absolutely nothing about. But, over these 30 years, we’ve only had one time when the rain totally closed us down, even though it was just the last two acts of the day. Otherwise, we’ve had plenty of storms and rains through the years, but they have usually subsided to where we could keep going.”
Known as an important roots music festival in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, the event was not only a true labor of love for everyone involved, it was also an important charity event that has played a huge part in funding the very programs that keep the music alive and passed on to new generations.
“This festival has always been volunteer-run,” said Henderson. “The only money that I ever made from that festival is when they pay me to play. As for running the festival, others and I do it for the love of it and to raise money for the youth scholarships. The kids have to write an essay on what their scholarship will do for them and that is one of the festival’s committees that I do sit on. So, I get to read the letters that they write for us, and we parade those scholarship-winning kids and groups across the stage every year.”
One organization that has been continuously supported by the proceeds of the festival is the Junior Appalachian Musicians program, which was created by Henderson’s longtime friend and partner Helen White. Unfortunately, White died in 2019. Her non-profit Junior Appalachian Musicians organization, however, has thrived and grown in recent years. Now, under the leadership of Executive Director Brett Morris, the JAM program currently teaches over 1,000 young folks every year how to play bluegrass and old-time music in 60 small towns and cities in this region. For a long time, the JAM program focused on Southwest Virginia, East Tennessee, Upstate South Carolina and in Western North Carolina. Currently, however, JAM is also being expanded to include instructional programs in West Virginia and Kentucky.
While encouraging the high-end playing of the acoustic guitar in the annual competition was a rewarding part of the festival, it is the funding of the youth scholarships that means the most to Henderson and his team. “We feel like we’ve been successful with this festival,” said Henderson. “As of this year, with the half million dollar scholarship mark reached, that’s not bad for a tiny little one-day festival. I’ve given away many new guitars over the years as well, doing so for every festival, and I enjoy doing it. We have always been an all-volunteer festival and I am really proud of that fact. That has been the trick to it, with so many people helping us and working for us over these three decades. We hate to give up on it, but 30 years is a good, round number, and so is a half million dollars in scholarship money. I hate to see it go, but it’s time, and we’d rather quit while we’re ahead.”
More information can be found at waynehenderson.org and jamkids.org.
