Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Good Friends Music Fest is returning to Manchester for its eighth year.

The two-day festival will be held on June 6 from 5-10 p.m. at Common John Brewing Co. and June 7 at the Rotary Park Amphitheater. Several bands, food trucks and craft vendors will be featured on both days.

Founder and organizer Logan Eley says the festival originally started as a way to broaden the music scene in Manchester.

“We started it with kind of the intention of bringing more original music to Manchester and not just cover music,” he explained. “The most important part about our festival is we want to keep it free admission always and all ages and family friendly as well.”

Eley explained that they keep it free admission so that attendees could come and take the opportunity to listen to bands they may not have heard before without having to spend money.

“They don’t have to buy a ticket. If they show up and hate it, they didn’t have to lose anything,” he said.

Festivalgoers are free to bring lawn chairs, blankets, pop-up canopies at Rotary Park and pets. “Anything they want just to be comfortable and hang out all day,” according to Eley.

“It’s really just kind of a relaxed environment,” he added. “People can come hopefully find a new band that they enjoy. We worked really hard on the lineup to make it as user friendly, and you’re pretty likely to like one of the bands that’s there no matter what kind of music you like.”

Artists set to perform are Natti Love Joys, Macy Tabor, Joey Fletcher Band, Pawn Shop Panic and Casual Cadenza among others.

The organizers try to keep the bands and vendors as local as possible. Eley explained that they did an “I-24 Test” to get bands along Interstate 24, so they have bands from Clarksville to Atlanta.

“Some of the other bands that we’ve gotten this year are like regional and national touring bands,” said Eley. “Airshow does all of the late-night stuff over at the Caverns any time they do jam festivals and stuff. Natti Love Joys hosted their own festival in Turtle Town, and they’ve been playing for decades.”

Eley noted that though there is no charge to get into the festival, he hopes that the money that would have been spent is used to buy some food or crafts.

“The money that you would have paid for a ticket, whatever that amount may be, we just ask that they in turn got to one of the vendors and buy some stuff or go to one of the food trucks and buy some food and kind of support that crew because they have invested their time and money to be there at the event,” he said.

Good Friends originally started as a one-day event that started as a result of Eley and the other organizers trying to find something with the Rotary Park Amphitheater that wasn’t being utilized as much.

“We hated seeing the amphitheater sitting there and not getting used,” he explained. “It’s kind of just been like an experiment of like what does it take to do something, and now we’re doing it. It’s been pretty fun. We encourage other people to do the same. Take hold of the resources that they can.”

The festival expanded to two days after Eley and the other organizers met and got to know Lebron and Angie Haggard from Common John.

“I consider them good friends of ours, the crew over there, and so we pitched the idea of doing multiple days and they were like ‘Absolutely. Come on and do it,’” recalled Eley.

Other than expanding to two days, Eley explained that the festival has grown in other ways as well. He said it has been odd having people asking to be a part of the festival instead of vice versa.

“It’s been interesting having to sign more contracts with the band’s management rather than just direct messaging a band and stuff,” he said. “And then it’s us trying to act as professional as we can. It’s been pretty interesting.”

Eley says he has heard in the lead-up to the event a lot of people referring to it as a “grassroots festival” which is title he doesn’t shy away from.

“We didn’t do that intentionally, but just the people we’ve met and the businesses we’ve connected with over the years, it’s compounded until this year,” he said. “It seems like it’s gonna be a pretty good turnout.”