Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Franklin’s Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival, returning for its 11th year Sept. 27 and 28, started after a run in the opposite direction on the day after Thanksgiving in 2013.

The festival’s founder and Better Than Ezra frontman Kevin Griffin recalls ending up at Harlinsdale Farm, a 258-acre former Tennessee Walking Horse Farm in the heart of Franklin, and immediately being hit with an idea as he stopped to catch his breath.

“I was like ‘This is the most beautiful setting I’ve ever seen for a festival.’ Big buildings on the historic register, huge fields, rolling hills, natural amphitheaters. I was like ‘I can’t believe there’s not a festival here,’” he said. “I’m a mile and a half from I-65, and I’m 20 minutes from Downtown Nashville. I ran back and called some buddies and a year and a half later we had our first festival in September of 2015.”

Griffin got the idea for the name from his many trips travelling through Natchez, Mississippi on his way to Louisiana State University. They had a “Pilgrimage of Homes” where they showcased old Antebellum homes, which he says fits the feel of the farm.

He noted that the location is one of the biggest selling points of the festival.

“Certain places have a beautiful setting like The Gorge up in Washington, but our festival is on this incredible farm. The farm itself is a headliner,” he explained. “It is a place that people go just to walk around the trails and the structures like the Hayes House and the mare barn. That’s where it starts, the unique setting.”

Pilgrimage has also boasted some impressive lineups in the past. Artists like Dave Matthews Band, Zach Bryan, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jack White and Justin Timberlake have played the festival in previous years.

Griffin says this year’s lineup is one of his favorites in recent memory. John Mayer is doing his first full-band show in Middle Tennessee since 2018. Kings of Leon will be making their first appearance at Pilgrimage, as will Turnpike Troubadours and Sam Fender, a British artist who Griffin calls the “dark horse” of this year’s festival.

The only two artists that are making return appearances are Grace Potter and Griffin’s band Better Than Ezra, who he still tours around the country with, more so now than they ever have.

Better Than Ezra started down in New Orleans and cut their teeth by touring the “SEC school circuit” where artists like Sam and Dave, Sam Cook, Isaac Hayes, Booker T and the M.G.’s, R.E.M and the B-52s played.

Griffin references an idea put forth by artists like Elton John and Billy Joel that musical artists have to “earn it on the road.”

“You’ve gotta be great live, and if you’re great live, you’re going to have a career because you’re going to be young once and you’re going to have a hit record once for the most people, that was the case for Ezra,” he explained. “But the thing that will keep you having a career through music and bands is fans coming back to see you play live because you’re good, and I like to think that Ezra is a good example of that.”

Despite a pushback from agents originally when asking about the DNA of the festival, Griffin, inspired by JazzFest in New Orleans, says it’s important to “get a deep dive into Middle Tennessee music” by offering a multi-genre lineup mixing country, Southern gospel, roots, Americana and alternative rock among others.

“That was really unique in 2015, and a lot of festivals have copied that like Bourbon and Beyond,” he said. “Even if you look at Bonnaroo, which we love, but before Pilgrimage, Bonnaroo wouldn’t have Americana artists on the stage, but I think the whole industry has kind of gone that way, we were just on the forefront of that.”

This year’s Pilgrimage Festival will have more artisans and vendors than it has in the past in an effort to lean more into the cultural aspect of the festival. Another feature that festivalgoers can look forward to is the Americana Music Triangle Experience tent.

The tent is decorated by Mike Wolfe from the television series American Pickers.

“It looks like you’ve gone back in time,” explained Griffin. “We have some amazing music there, a great kids area where all the food vendors are. Look for elbow room. The GA experience we like to think is like a VIP experience at most other festivals.”

While the life of the festival has been filled with highs, there have also been a few bumps along the way. Much like 2025’s Bonnaroo, Pilgrimage got rained out back in 2018 and in 2024, the festival was held during Hurricane Helene.

“It’s crazy that you do all this work to build this great bill and all these things, and then something as moody or unpredictable as the weather can ruin it all,” said Griffin. “We were bummed for Bonnaroo because it was a great lineup. All those people out there. We’ve been there, and I know it sucks.”

Grifin explained that, while the weather is unpredictable, the Pilgrimage team meets with officials from the city of Franklin and others on three separate occasions to prepare for any contingencies that they could possibly expect.

The meetings take place in an Ops facility that Griffin describes as looking like something from NCIS: Los Angeles.

“You have no idea this level of technology is there for a city like Franklin, and we go, and we do these tabletop run-throughs where we go through all these different scenarios,” he said. “It’s the whole festival crew. It’s fire. It’s police. It’s SWAT. It’s hospital. Every group is represented, and we go through all these scenarios. Fire, explosion, all these different things so we are prepared for eventualities.”

The city of Franklin and members of the team from Visit Franklin, the official destination marketing organization for Williamson County, have worked with Pilgrimage to make sure it is the right event for the space both physically and from an experience standpoint.

“Since the beginning of the festival, members of the city’s team and our team… have been deeply involved in an advisory committee around how we can help support the success of this event and how we can help it integrate into the fabric of this amazing place that we all live in and love,” explained Visit Franklin President and CEO Maureen Haley Thornton.

Thornton says that the event is a great opportunity for the local businesses in Franklin, helped in a big way by the walkability between the downtown area and the festival grounds.

“We absolutely see and love seeing people who are attending and coming to the festival having brunch Downtown or coming in on Friday and getting some festival ready gear by shopping at some of our boutiques,” she said. “We absolutely do see the people coming to the festival are also spending their dollars in our restaurants and in our shops and in our local places.”

One of the fun things for Visit Franklin in regard to the festival, according to Thornton, is that Franklin is a community full of musicians and a “really friendly, casual place,” which she says is mirrored by the experience festivalgoers have on the grounds.

“You will see people who love the music and people who love the atmosphere,” she explained. “It is a popular place to be but it is on such a big, beautiful piece of land that you’re not feeling the sense of the crowd that you might have given how many people are there, so it’s a little bit more comfortable.”

Thornton noted that the biggest opportunity from a tourism standpoint on the Visit Franklin side of things is the fact that people from other places come and get a great feel for the experience of the community.

“They’re staying in hotels. There shopping and dining here, but we also see that there might be people who come for the first time for Pilgrimage but then come back as they find ‘Oh, Downtown Franklin is really charming’ or that there’s more things that they can go and do and see that are worth a visit back,” she said. “We also really love that opportunity to expose people and then have them come back another time.”

With all the growth the festival has seen and positive impact that it has on the city of Franklin, Griffin explained the feeling of awe he gets when reflecting on the last decade or so.

“Even though as a working musician I had played tons of festivals, we had no idea on how to put one together, and to look back over the last 11 plus years and kind of see how we’ve grown and gotten experienced and how the team puts it together, I just sit back and marvel at it now,” he said. “We’ve got a festival director and heads of sponsorship and marketing and production, so it’s just this amazing team that we’ve built, and it’s really gratifying to watch.”