It has been a busy and impressive year for the Ritter Park Amphitheater.
The schedule at the outdoor venue has ramped up in recent years as Huntington continues to do what cities on the rise do by using its assets to increase the standard of living of the region.
After a summer of multiple performances and events, a new groove is about to descend upon the green this weekend.
On Saturday, Sept. 25, the 5th annual Funktafest music festival is set to happen from 11:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. This all-ages festival will feature music by Dr. Bacon, The M.F.B., Beggars Clan, HellNaw, The Greens, ZenJuJu, BERTH, Three’s Company Blues, Heavy Hitters and Flip-on-It along with DJ spins by Charlie Brown Superstar, DJ Charlie Blac, Lancelott Live with Jon Dose, Tripster, BW Stylz, Salty Crankbait, DJ Correct and DJ Mixar.
Tickets to Funktafest are $25 with a $75 VIP tickets available as well. After the festival is over, consider zipping over to The Loud venue for a music-filled after-party beginning at 10 p.m.
Like a lot of events, Funktafest had to take a year off after COVID-19 restrictions removed it from the schedule in 2020. This weekend, however, the funky jams are back with Dr. Bacon at the top of the ticket.
The group Dr. Bacon is one of the many western North Carolina bands to carve out a following here in the Tri-State, with other groups like Town Mountain, Big Something and the Travers Brothers added to that mix. In small-yet-musically productive North Carolina towns such as Asheville and Boone and other nearby mountain hamlets, that area of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky mountains continues to produce awesome musicians.
When Asheville-based Dr. Bacon traveled to the Tri-State for the last Funktafest, the band was hired to play the official after-party. This year, the funky troupe has moved its groove over to the main Funktafest stage.
“We first started playing music together in the summer of 2012, although we weren’t called Dr. Bacon then,” said Myles Dunder, original member of the group. “We were not called Dr. Bacon until late 2013.”
Dunder came out of the heavy metal scene yet turned to bluegrass music while going to Appalachian State University in Boone. As the band grew bigger in size, however, horn-driven funk, rock and soulful jams became the new direction, albeit with their Appalachian Mountain influences still in the holster.
“We had a Sunday brunch gig at a place then called Char in Boone, now called The Local, and we were looking to expand our sound, so we started doing instrument switches and stuff like that,” said Dunder. “Myself and the mandolin player at the time were both in the marching bands at App State and he knew that I could play the saxophone and I knew he could play the trumpet. So, we got to where we could sit down our stringed instruments and pick up the horns and do little switches. In fact, when we got that brunch gig at The Local, it was partially because our harmonica player Michael worked there and he would come up and play a song with us and then go back to serving his tables.”
Eventually, Dr. Bacon decided to relocate from Boone to Asheville, with the latter being a bigger town with a larger number of live music venues.
“We were playing a lot in Boone and we were really busy, and then we began to expand outside of Boone, gradually realizing that we had to move on from there because of over-saturation,” said Dunder. “We played so much in Boone that people kind of took us for granted, because they could come and see us at anytime. But, I love Boone and have nothing against it; it just made it harder to expand. Also, because Boone is more secluded (there are no interstate highways running through Boone whereas both I-40 and I-26 intersect in Asheville), when we wanted to play out of town, we would have to add on an extra hour and a half to drive down from the mountain.”
Being over-saturated in one’s hometown is a mistake that many bands make all over the country. Still, moving to another city as a group is a big decision for a band, fraught with anxiety.
“The move was difficult,” said Dunder. “The move was definitely partially responsible for the personnel changes we made once we got to Asheville. When you move, sometimes you become really comfortable in the environment you were in and when you take that big step, you never really know how it’s going to turn out or how things will end up settling. But, the band and I timed the move pretty well. Some people, of course, were not into the touring musician thing and they needed to have jobs that were not going to be conducive to the lifestyle we were aiming for. That is when moved away from the bluegrass sound and got more into the funk and party rock situation, with tendencies to go in any direction that we want to go in. It was shaping into more of an electric project.”
Now, Dr. Bacon calls its sound “funky, non-traditional roots and rock ‘n’ roll music.”
“It’s a spectacle,” said Dunder, of the group’s shows. “It is a big party with a lot of different instruments. We do try to change things up as much as possible when it comes to the sound of the band. One song might be a punky bluegrass-type of song and the next one might be a funk song and the next one might be a bluesy or modern hard rock-type of tune, or a mixture of any of it.”
More information on the festival and ticket purchases can be found at funktafest.com.