MT. SOLON — When the Rayburn parents ask their daughters, ages 11 and 13, if they’d rather skip Christmas or the Red Wing Roots Music Festival, their answer is always the same: Christmas.
“We say it’s our Christmas,” Maureen Rayburn said of the music festival. “Even when walking around with wet feet and hair, we’re like, this is the best. We can’t wait for next year.”
Maureen, her husband Brandt, and their two daughters — 13-year-old Cassidy and 11-year-old Imogene — are from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. They have been attending the Red Wing Roots music festival at Natural Chimneys Park and Campground in Augusta County since the girls were four and two. It’s become the family’s “longest-running tradition,” Brandt said.
“Imogene and I were singing, ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year,’” Cassidy said.
The only festival the family has missed since they started attending Red Wing Roots was the one everyone else missed — in the summer of 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But they still gathered in the backyard with chairs and a firepit and watched The Steel Wheels perform on a laptop screen.
The family has even joked that they reckon years by what happened at that year’s Red Wing. Counting this one, there are only eight more Red Wings to go until an event Imogene says she’s looking forward to.
“When I’m 18, we’re going to get matching Red Wing tattoos,” Imogene said. “I already have the drawing.”
The Rayburn family discovered Red Wing Roots through The Steel Wheels, the Virginia-based band that started the festival. They performed a concert at an old Quaker meetinghouse in Westgrove, Pennsylvania. At the time, Maureen was pregnant with Cassidy.
“We went and were like, I like what these guys are doing,” Maureen said. “So, a couple of years later, we heard about Red Wing Roots. We said, “Let’s go, try it out.”
The family started camping at Z Lot but moved to the Chimney Ridge campground. This year, they’re “glamping” to accommodate Imogene’s double bass, which she brought because this is her first year performing with the Red Wing Academy.
“We had a showcase for all the parents in a different place,” Imogene said, explaining why she wasn’t nervous to perform at Red Wing for the first time. “It looked like a lot more people [here], but I think it was actually less.”
Outside of music, the sisters have a few yearly favorite activities at Red Wing Roots. They usually get henna tattoos, scope out the free merchandise at stalls — which Imogene calls “free shopping” — and balance on a slacklining rope, though they haven’t seen the slacklining station yet this year. They expect it will return, though.
“A lot of things have come, but not many things have gone away,” Imogene said.
As young children, the girls attended the Appalachian Forest School, a children’s nature program that used to take place at Red Wing Roots. They remember crushing up rocks to make paint there and playing in the creek. They remember riding bikes, “flipping” other kids in hammocks, and the many times when rain threatened to spoil their fun.
“It was monsooning [in 2023], and we had to hide under the hula hoop tent,” Cassidy said. “Once, Imogene and I were sitting in a wagon in Z lot, and it was monsooning.”
“We had a cover,” Imogene said. “But it was leaking.”
The girls even got stranded away from their parents during a pouring rain at Red Wing Roots once, and they jokingly recalled the time they became “missing children” at the festival. However, they were quickly found, and their parents were never worried.
“They know this place like the back of their hand,” Maureen said. “They’re not lost.”
Plenty of kids have grown up at Red Wing Roots, going every or almost every year of their lives. Since the festival has only been going on for 13 years, no adults can say the same.
Jeff Guinn of Harrisonburg has brought his nine-year-old son, David, to every Red Wing Roots since he was born.
“I’ve been here every year,” David said. “I like the shady grove and the music meadow, and I like going to the pool when I have a chance and listening to the music.”
His favorite activity, however, is the popular “Kingdoms” lawn game, where teams compete to knock down other teams’ wooden “castles” with thrown balls. The game is so popular that kids often line up for half an hour to play it, and David has even had to line up for an hour before.
“It’s definitely worth it,” David said.
Jeff Guinn works for The Mark-It screen printing shop, which creates merch for Red Wing Roots and has brought all three of his kids to the festival since they were babies, lugging strollers and diaper bags, even camping some years with the kids.
“We have an 11-year-old as well,” Guinn said. “We’ve had three babies come through here. It’s getting easier as they get older.”
Guinn said he has been to other music festivals, but Red Wing is the friendliest to kids.
“We see tons of people we know. We meet new people,” Guinn said. “It’s the safest festival I’ve been to for sure, which is what makes it unique and special.”
