Music & Film

Wartrace's modern festival tradition began with local guitar maker Don Gallagher, who came home from the 1968 Union Grove Fiddlers Convention in North Carolina with an idea. With Wendel Hartman and Jimmy Atkins, he launched the Wartrace Pickin' and Fiddlers Convention on August 17–18, 1979 — dedicated to the memory of J.W. Gallagher, whose handmade guitars had already carried the Wartrace name around the world.

Some 2,000 people came to the Horse Show grounds that first year. The stage was a flat-bed truck trailer; a pavilion housed forty craft vendors; Friday night was for jam sessions and Saturday brought competitions in ten categories. The state legislature later recognized the convention as an official Tennessee State Championship.

Weather was the festival's great rival — “thunderstorms all around us,” Gallagher remembered — and the final year washed out entirely. Even then, sponsorships left a $300 profit, donated to the Child Development Center.

The spirit came back in the early 2000s as Wartrace MusicFest, with Gallagher — by then the town's mayor — serving as committee chairman. “It remains dear to my heart,” he said. It remains dear to the town's, too: MusicFest still fills downtown every September, free to all.