Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

In the latter half of the 1980s, Manchester residents Joe and Joyce McCullough, both bluegrass musicians, began putting on a bluegrass competition at the Coffee County Fairgrounds.

Now, nearly four decades later, their grandson Joey Gipson is starting one of his own.

“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and just really didn’t have the place to do it or really the time,” he explained. “My grandparents had put on a contest in the late 80s, and they did it for several years at the fairgrounds in Manchester, and they’re the ones that got me into playing, so that was something after they passed away that I really wanted to do.”

Taking up the banjo at the age of 10, Gipson is an accomplished and nationally recognized competitor in the bluegrass world. He’s won over 20 state championships and two top three national championships and, by his estimation, probably close to 100 wins all together.

Despite his accolades as a contestant, Gipson has never organized a competition of his own.

“I’ve entered hundreds of competitions, but I’ve never been on this end of it,” he said. “Luckily, I’ve had several friends that have put on contests over several years and given me some help. The sponsorship wasn’t that hard to get. Everybody was really on board with it and really tickled about having something like that in Manchester.”

The inaugural Southeast Bluegrass Banjo Championship will be held on Sept. 27 at Common John Brewing Co. Larry Chunn from the Grand Ole Opry will emcee the event and the judges for the competition will be Manchester’s own Becky Buller, Jonathan Jones and Weston Stewart.

Registration will begin at 8 a.m. and the competition will start at 9 a.m.

There will be multiple categories for entry by other instruments as well including fiddle, guitar, mandolin and dobro.

“Whatever they play, they can get in it,” noted Gipson.

A first-place prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the winner in the banjo category with the winners in the other instrument categories receiving $500.

There will also be a category for kids 14 and under where the prize for first and second will be a banjo donated by Deering Banjo and the Gold Tune Instrument Group which Gipson says is noteworthy to him personally.

“To be able to know these people that well that they’re willing to give me banjos to give away on my first time doing a contest means a lot,” he said.

Gipson also noted that it was important for him to include the younger age category to give those aspiring musicians somewhere to showcase their talent.

“That’s really one of the main reasons why I wanted to get this one going because they’re kind of disappearing,” he said regarding bluegrass competitions. “When I first started, I’d go almost every weekend from May into October with my grandparents somewhere for a contest or a festival. They’re just kind of fading away.”

Even after playing for 35 years, Gipson says that he still loves everything about playing the banjo.

“From the time I started, I fell in love with it,” he said. “I play every day for at least 30 minutes. There’s really not anything that I don’t like about it. I’ve done it for so long and it’s kind of natural to me. I especially love learning new stuff. That’s cool that after playing so long, you can still pick up something.”

Gipson also writes music as well, mostly instrumentals. He says that he’s probably forgotten more than he’s kept but has started putting them on paper to keep that from happening.

His hope for the banjo competition is to see it expand over the next few years.

“Within the next five years, I want it to be the biggest competition in the nation,” he explained. “I want to turn it into a two-day event with several more different categories. The Smithville Jamboree is a big two-day event, and the one in Athens, Alabama at the college Oct. 3 and 4, they probably have 4-5,000 people on a Friday night and usually more on Saturdays. That’s what I’m shooting for.”

Those ambitions are ones that Common John’s John “Bull” Fletcher hopes for as well.

“With the hopes of all the events that we have here, we start them in our backyard and hopefully they’ll outgrow us and bleed over into the rest of the city and then we’ll do some more,” he said.

Fletcher and Gipson went to school together but connected about the bluegrass contest after Gipson came to one of Common John’s Sunday Sing-along open mic events.

The two got together and hashed out some of the details, and Fletcher helped him with the branding for the event in addition to giving it a home and getting the paperwork together before Gipson made a well-received pitch to Manchester Tourism.

Fletcher noted that putting on an event is “a heck of an undertaking,” especially an inaugural one like the championship,

“Especially when it’s your first one, you have so much to learn,” he explained. “You have to build a trust with people because it is a trust mechanism for people to decide to load up and dedicate a whole day to being a part of this. There’s always a lot of barriers with your very first one.”

Despite those barriers, he commends Gipson for the work that he put into it.

“Joey has gone out and, between personal relationships and just beating the pavement, has put almost all of the money together to cover all of the prizes because that was our main thing,” Fletcher explained. “That’s the biggest thing about events that people don’t understand: the production costs, the staff costs, all that stuff to put it together. When you want to start and you start here, you eliminate so many of those expenses.”

Fletcher says he asks only one thing regarding the event and its venue: just give it a chance.

“Come out, check it out and support it because when you put all stereotypes aside plus you put all preconceptions people have about what an evening out at an establishment looks like, it’s completely different here,” he said. “We’re family friendly. We’re not a bar. We are a place for gathering and fellowship.”

Give everybody a chance, but if you’re not willing to give everybody a chance because of what live music is sometimes associated with, know that we do our best here to do it a little bit different,” he added.