Line Dancing, Accordion Fans, and Reunions: A Dispatch from Biscuits & Banjos

“Everything Rhiannon Giddens touches turns to gold.” 

Don’t take it from me, take it from Biscuits & Banjos volunteer Beverley Wimberley. She’d been disappointed, recently, to simultaneously learn about the festival and discover it was sold out; when the opportunity to volunteer presented itself, she was elated. 

“I jumped on it,” Wimberley tells the INDY. “I’m so excited—the sold-out Biscuits and Banjos, and I get to volunteer!” 

Wimberley, a Raleigh resident, has followed Giddens’ work over the years, from her time with the Carolina Chocolate Drops—Wimberley took her children to Shakori Hills to watch the band, back in those early days, noting that Justin Robinson, like her, is from Gastonia—to the historical opera Omar, which Wimberley went to see at UNC’s Memorial Hall. 

Although volunteering placed her at the fringe of some events, it did bring unexpected moments, like when she complimented a pair of older women on their hats, only to have one of them proudly exclaim: “I’m Rhiannon Giddens’ mother!” 

This serendipitous, joyful energy coursed through Durham at the inaugural run of the festival, founded by Giddens for the “reclamation of Black music, art, and culture” in her home state. 

The city had plenty on tap this weekend to demand people’s attention: Earth Day events, the Durham Senior games, the annual Sandlot Revival tournament, a messy mile beer run. Downtown, Saturday afternoon, Jehovah’s Witnesses took their post on the 5 Points corner as a Muslim group tabled CCB Plaza; just across the street, a couple was having a dramatic wedding shoot against a vintage teal corvette. It felt, briefly, like a reality far removed from the one currently unspooling from the White House. 

Nowhere was this better exhibited than at a free talk with Tressie McMillan Cottom and Mychal Threets titled “Libraries as Sanctuaries for Black Stories.” Held midday Saturday at the American Tobacco Campus’s water tower, the turnout of around two hundred people was especially admirable given the heat.

People sprawled around the lawn’s periphery, tucking into shady corners but nevertheless sweating it out to hear Threets, a librarian who has amassed a large following on Instagram due to his joyful ambassadorship for the profession, and sociologist Cottom, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and New York Times columnist. 

“Libraries are not cute, twee places,” Cottom told the crowd. “If you did not think libraries were important before today, consider how important they are to the people who want to destroy them.” 

After painting a picture of Black history’s role in librarianship, Threets instructed people to “stop using our library voices” when it comes to the existential threats libraries are facing from the Trump administration’s federal cuts and Republican-led book bans. 

“Think about what’s possible for the imagination when you are trusted to just borrow stuff,” Cottom said, contrasting the ability to check out books for free with the great lengths it takes to purchase a basic item from behind a locked CVS case, “And how that threatens other people’s visions of the world.” 

After the library talk, I made my way to a New Dangerfields show and dropped by a talk by food scholar Toni Tipton-Martin. The festival’s format was split between paid shows and generous slates of free programming (all three events I’ve mentioned were free), a combination that could have been chaotic but consistently felt smooth and organized. With its $1.8 million budget, Biscuits & Banjos felt like a shining example of Durham’s capacity for events like this.

Music shows were held at the Armory, the Pinhook, and the Carolina Theatre, with the largest show of the weekend—the Carolina Chocolate Drops reunion—held at DPAC. Elsewhere, free programming took place at the water tower lawn, American Underground, PSI Theatre, and the “Blackbird lot”—the parking lot behind the Pinhook—where water stations and a giant alcohol tent were available to attendees in equal measure. 

A “biscuit trail” pulled seven local restaurants into the mix, featuring different biscuit creations. (My one regret of the weekend: heard lots of banjos, ate no biscuits.) Organizers planned a relatively intimate festival, for year one, with tickets selling out and a modest attendance of 7,800 over the weekend (the DPAC show sold out at 2700 tickets), with crowds sprawled comfortably across pockets of the city, flitting between events and restaurants. I found one of Durham’s rare four-hour parking spots easily— something I doubt will happen again at the festival’s next iteration.

While at 21C’s “Music Village” setup on the hotel’s second floor, I met Faith, 26, as she waited in line for a banjo lesson. 

“I’m a complete beginner. I learned about the festival and came to meet Black banjo players,” said Faith, who said that while here, she learned of a banjo gathering near where she lives in South Carolina.  

For anyone seeking to be in a community of Black roots music, or simply looking to honor and appreciate it, this was unquestionably the place to be. I’ve never seen as many cowboy boots or accordion fans in one place in my life, nor witnessed as many warm reunions, as if I’d walked into a family gathering.  

Saturday night found a closing party “pop-up juke box” at the Pinhook, helmed by local BIPOC and LGBTQ+ DJ collective The Conjure, with Black western movies projected against the stage backdrop. Dances on the floor invariably turned into line dances and two-steps, and partially through, Giddens came over from the DPAC performance and helped close the bar down.

After the festival ended, Rhiannon Giddens’ team confirmed to the INDY that the festival will be held again, though it is taking a break next year. The next Biscuit & Banjos is slated for 2027.

It’s the kind of event where word-of-mouth praise will go the distance for future sales. The balance of a walkable, well-planned layout and a down-home feel, high-caliber acts with varied, accessible programming, seems likely to lead to a larger festival in 2027.

Just don’t wait to get tickets—as Beverley Wimberley told me, good things go fast.  

Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email [email protected].