Old Settler's Music Festival

Old Settler's Music Festival is still at Camp Ben McCulloch, in Driftwood, Texas, at 18301 Ranch to Market Road 1826, zip 78619. Onion Creek crosses the camp. The site's card, read on 28 September 2026, still offers a later April weekend and calls it the fortieth. Old Settler's Music Festival Inc., a volunteer-run nonprofit, organizes it. KXAN, before those three days, calls Betsy Boone acting director and a board member: she has been going for more than twenty of the nearly forty years. Press goes through Mcguckin PR, Heidi Labensart, heidi@mcguckinpr.com. The site and CultureMap write McCulloch. KXAN and the Austin Chronicle write McCullough. Both spellings stay together.

CultureMap, on 10 December 2025, puts the first ground at Old Settlers Park, Round Rock, in 1987, and the move to this camp in 2002, with the music at Salt Lick Pavilion, across the road. It speaks of fifteen years there and of another move in 2018. The SH 130 note speaks of sixteen years of leasing in Driftwood. The Chronicle puts Dripping Springs between Round Rock and Driftwood, and says the Ben lease was cut in 2017, a year earlier than expected. Two organizers then built a Driftwood Music Festival on the same ground, and a lawsuit stopped it. In 2018, with Jean Spivey, the festival bought 145 acres at 1616 FM 3158, Dale, about twelve miles southeast of Lockhart. Ear Traffic, in 2022, calls that ground the forever home, southeast of Lockhart, and measures it at 29 acres. 145 and 29 stay together. Talia Bryce took over from Spivey in 2022 and left the job when they announced the sale, listed at two million dollars. The 2024 edition was not held. The site's past lineup puts 2025, 24 to 27 April, still at The Old Settler's Homestead, in Dale, and calls it the thirty-eighth, with Tierro Lee as festival director. Ear Traffic calls 2022 the thirty-fifth. CultureMap calls 2026 the thirty-ninth. The three figures stay together. The start year kept is 1987.

Rhythms, Brian Wise, on 20 April 2026, walks Friday the 17th, Saturday the 18th and Sunday the 19th. The organization's theme was Back to Ben. Everything stayed on the camp side: Salt Lick, which used to give the stages room, was not used. There is a covered pavilion for a few hundred chairs, and people outside in camp chairs. The big stage, nearby, sits on what looks to Wise like an old tennis court and opens only at night, after the pavilion has closed. Friday, in the pavilion: Feeding Leroy, Foggy Memory Boys, Two Runner (Paige Anderson and Emilie Rose) and Magoo, with no title. At night, on the big stage, Lindsay Lou and The Brothers Comatose, from San Francisco, with no title. On Saturday Wise missed the first two: he drove fifteen minutes to Buda for a sweater. He came back for Warren Hood, son of Champ Hood, with Emily Gimble, granddaughter of Johnny Gimble, with no title. Louisiana Surf Department brought what another mouth calls swampedelic country tonk. Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper closed the pavilion. A storm was threatening. Wise left for Austin. The Last Revel and Railroad Earth, he says, were only delayed an hour. He did not walk that hour.

On Sunday the thermometer reached 22 degrees by mid-afternoon. Billy Bright, mentor to Sarah Jarosz and an old colleague of Peter Rowan and Tony Rice, opened the pavilion for an hour, with no title. Shelby Means, formerly in Golden Highway with Molly Tuttle, had an hour and a half. Wise closes two covers: Willin', by Lowell George, and the one he writes as Million Reason. On Lady Gaga's record the title is Million Reasons. Both spellings stay together. Kevin Russell closed with Shinyribs, the group he built when the Gourds broke up. Wise points to I Got Your Medicine, from the 2017 album of the same name, with an eight-piece band and backing vocals, and Born In Chicago, by Nick Gravenites, on the Paul Butterfield Band's first album. Rhythms remembers 2025 with Sierra Hull, The Devil Makes Three and Watchhouse, as a bill, not as a walk.

The other night with titles is 2022, still in Dale, told by Steve Levine in Ear Traffic on 7 May. He calls it the thirty-fifth. Heidi Labensart gave no attendance figure. Galactic, with Eric Gordon and Anjelika Jelly Joseph, closed Saturday with Yes We Can Can and Clap Your Hands. JJ Grey and Mofro did 99 Shades of Crazy, Lochloosa and House of the Rising Sun. Railroad Earth, the day All For the Song came out, brought Del McCoury up for High on a Mountain and stretched Mighty River. Flaco Jimenez, as Levine spells it, with Max Baca and Los Texmaniacs, did Who Were You Thinkin' Of. Peter Rowan, as Free Mexican Airforce, did Moonlight Midnight. Los Texmaniacs, with Will Owen Gage, played Foxy Lady. Shinyribs closed Sunday with Wasted Days and Wasted Nights, by Freddy Fender. Feelin' Good Again, by Robert Earl Keen, is a wish of Levine's, not a song of that night.

The information page says tickets, parking, RVs and car camping sold out. Box office: Tuesday the 14th and Wednesday the 15th from 3 pm to 8 pm and Thursday the 16th from 10 am to 8 pm, only with early arrival; Friday and Saturday from 10 am to 8 pm; Sunday until 1 pm. On Monday the 13th the camp closed after a crawfish fest. No glass, no dogs, no fire on the ground; propane and gas, yes. Outside alcohol stays at the tent. At the stages, the Watering Hole serves beer and wine. No cash machine. TicketTailor and a wristband. Rhythms puts the first one, in 1987, at about 600 people and says the return to Ben, at times, looked like that figure again.