Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival

For the uninitiated, Shakori Hills is a biannual festival with four days of music, camping, and workshops in the rolling hills of Chatham County. Fifty-seven musical acts will perform across the long weekend, in genres ranging from bluegrass and folk to Latin dance and dancehall. As usual, Donna the Buffalo will headline the festival, along with New Orleans funk group Galactic, blues-rock lapsteelist Roosevelt Collier, and singer-songwriter Ryan Montbleau. Local acts are always a huge focal point for the festival; this year, local-lineup highlights include bluegrass-punk fusion act The Tan & Sober Gentlemen, Raleigh garage-rockers Ghostt Bllonde, and Durham’s Skylar Gudasz. As for child-friendly programming, there’s Junior Appalachian Musicians, Farmer Eno, Secret Monkey Weekend and School of Rock Chapel Hill. When you’re tired of grooving out in a field to Donna the Buffalo, Shakori also offers lots of dancing, from swing and square dancing to salsa and judgement-free ecstatic dancing.