MATTHEW BURNETTE

Staff Writer

Manchester’s homegrown music festival is returning for its ninth year with a lineup of both local and nationally touring artists who are guaranteed to bring the fun to the local community.

The Good Friends Music Fest is returning to Common John Brewing Co. on Sept. 25 from 3 until 10 p.m. and the Rotary Park Amphitheater on Sept. 26 also from 3 until 10 p.m.

A new addition to this year’s festival is a Pre-Party on Sept. 24 from 5 until 9 p.m. at Beans Creek Winery, expanding it to a three-day event as opposed to two days like years past.

Fest Co-Founder Logan Eley, whose band Steady Rotation hosts the festival, says that they wanted to partner with Beans Creek due to their space and focus on highlighting original music.

“I wanted to get them on because they host music and they have a really nice stage and a platform to do it,” he explained. “They showcase original music and original artists like Common John, and that’s kind of what we’re focused on, promoting original artists in Manchester. They’re just really cool people as well and a great spot.”

Another highlight of the Beans Creek day of the festival is that it will open with a performance from Fang Distortion, one of the bands from the Chord Collective group.

In addition to expanding to three days, the festival is also adding an extra artist at Beans Creek and two additional hours at Common John.

There will also be artists playing inside of Common John between outdoor sets instead of playing house music as the outdoor stage transitions artists and bands, an addition Eley says he’s excited for.

“Most of those are people that are local to Manchester and maybe haven’t played a ton of shows or have a social media page for their music project, but they’re killer musicians,” he explained.

Other than Steady Rotation, this year’s lineup, which has doubled size from last year, has only two returning artists and will feature bands such as Dizgo, Moga Family Band, 65 North Pickers and Omcat.

Co-founder and CFO Chris Freimuth says that it has been “pretty cool” to see how they’ve “leveled up” the booking for this year’s festival.

“The booking this year perfectly aligned with what we’re trying to do as a festival: showcasing really great regional talent from Manchester as well as Middle Tennessee and across Nashville, as well as leveling up the platform and having nationally touring acts flying into Manchester for our festival,” he explained. “That really elevates the platform for local and regional artists throwing their name on the bill with these nationally touring acts.”

Another band on the lineup that has been on the booking bucket list is The Jauntee which Eley says they’ve wanted to get since the start of the festival.

“We’ve been trying to get them for nine years basically, and it’s finally happening,” he said. “When we first started doing the Fest and it was tiny, just us and some of our friends that played, it was like ‘Man, what if we booked The Jauntee!’ And now we’re doing it which is wild and really cool.”

“It has literally been like a number one goal of this festival is to book that band and we got them,” added Freimuth. “We’re coming full circle from the origin of the festival.”

The Good Friends Fest typically is held in June on the weekend before Bonnaroo, but Freimuth says that they wanted to try something new for this year’s festival.

“This is the ninth annual Good Friends and historically we’ve done it the weekend before Bonnaroo, so it’s like a hug to our local community for bringing them out for this event, and that’s kind of the whole ethos of what we’re doing, before the craziness of 80,000 people descending upon our town and taking it over,” he explained.

“This year we just wanted to shake things up and experiment. It’s really hot in June for one thing, and we’ve been doing it the same way for so long, so we wanted to shake things up and experiment and see how fall looks like.”

Freimuth noted there was some potential for holding the festival during what would be Bonnaroo’s normal weekend after the festival announced it was taking 2027 off.

The festival originated from a group of friends including Eley and Freimuth who met at Westwood Elementary and bonded over music.

“We kind of realized that we should do something with this,” recalled Eley. “A big part of it when we first started the first three or so years when it was a one-day event and we were still figuring out how to do it was learning how to get a permit for the amphitheater and stuff like that. But it’s because we were in a band and the only place in town that we could play that would book us since we played original music was our garage.”

Freimuth added that they were also inspired by festivals like Music Tree and Bonnaroo.

“Growing up with Bonnaroo in our backyard, we’ve been going since we were like 14 and have been every year since. That’s the permission as well. It’s like ‘Oh, you can just do this.’ You can create your own event, and you can bring people together with live music,” he explained.

The festival is pet and kid friendly with treats available for the dogs and bounce houses available for kids at Rotary Park amphitheater.

Good Friends is free admission, something that Eley says they intend to maintain each year of the festival.

“Being a free admission event, it kind of throws people for a loop, especially as our talent pool grows and we book some out-of-town bands to elevate it,” he explained. “It throws people for a loop because it’s not totally normal, especially around here to do something at that level for free and anybody can show up. Sometimes you can have a good time just for the sake of having a good time.”