Biggest Takeaways from the 2025 Master Musicians Festival

Editor’s Note: This article and photos are a contribution from Jason W. Ashcraft.

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Neighborly. 

If you had to describe the 32nd annual Master Musicians Festival with only one word, that’d be it. Because that’s exactly what it felt like. It’s a family-friendly event that’s not yet been exploited by the big corporate machines, likely due to the careful curation by its founders: the Somerset, Kentucky-based entrepreneurs Julie Harris and Tiffany Finley. They operate the town’s largest annual gathering under a non-profit organization, along with a small army of neighborly volunteers who all chip in. 

Yet when these neighbors decide to throw their annual music festival, not only do they keep it affordable so everyone can attend, they’re still able to attract some of the best names in music. Every year festival organizers herald a Master—a term which they lovingly designate to one of the festival’s performers. The event also makes sure to give special emphasis to Kentucky artists. 

2025’s Masters was the legendary country, blues, and southern rock band from the hills and farms of Edmonton, Kentucky, The Kentucky Headhunters, who were recently profiled here for their more than 50 year career.

Over the years, artists and performers from all genres of music have crossed the stages of this quaint Kentucky music festival. Yet, given the geographic region it’s held in—the foothills of Appalachia and the Cumberland River Valley—country, folk, Americana, and bluegrass are the styles of music that typically reign supreme here. 

Here’s some of the best stuff witnessed at the 2025 Master Musician’s Festival.

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 Jamey Johnson 

There is just no sufficient way to describe how authentically stellar Jamey Johnson is, not only as a songwriter and recording artist, but as a human being. He writes straight from his heart, and can often deliver a song-induced gut check that can hit like a ton of bricks—songs that make you stop to ponder your own self, asking “Am I doing things the right way?” “Do I show enough gratitude to our Veterans?” “Do I understand history correctly?”

If you can make it through one of his live musical sermons without being tear-jerked at least once—most likely from a stirring performance of “In Color”—then it may be questionable if you even have a soul worth saving. A staunch country traditionalist, Jamey’s performance at Master Musicians Festival was exactly what Somerset had been waiting decades for. That’s how long organizers had waited for his tour schedule to open up to make his appearance possible.

As attendees of the Master Musicians Festival learned this weekend, Jamey is the leading country recording artist from the modern era who is keeping traditional country music’s backbone standing straight and tall, just like you should expect any Marine to do ’till the day they die. SemperFi, Jamey Johnson. SemperFi. 

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The Kentucky Headhunters 

The Kentucky Headhunters can pretty much fit into any type of crowd, or any festival event you place them in. They’ll win that crowd over with their signature high energy clash of southern rock, blues, and country, with a dash of added psychedelia thrown in to keep just a few hippies stirring about in their crowds.

Heralded by festival organizers as this year’s Masters, the Kentucky Headhunters were in prime form on a Saturday night in their home state. With rousing performances of all their signature hit songs like “Dumas Walker,” “Oh, Lonesome Me,” and covers of “Spirit In The Sky” and “House Of The Rising Sun,” the Headhunters’ age never once showed.

Even good ole’ Jamey Johnson made his first stage appearance of the night at mid-set to assist on vocal duties for a joint performance of Bill Monroe’s “Walk Softly On This Heart Of Mine,” a song that the Kentucky Headhunters have pretty much owned since they released it on their landmark debut album in 1989. Not surprisingly, they owned the Master Musicians Fest crowd, too.

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Cody Lee Meece

This young guitar slingin’ outlaw country bluester from East Kentucky is the real damn deal. While he’s still paying his dues, some of his dues are being paid back. The hard-livin’ troubadour admits that his backstory includes some drug use, homelessness, and he presumably lives the life that he sings of, which he terms as “Raunchy Tonk.” While emitting Waylon’esque vibes both aesthetically and sonically, without really setting out to do that, he opened his set with “Cocaine & Wine” from his third album, No Excuses released in 2023.

After his performance, when asked for his perspective on what the state of country music is right now in 2025, he stated: 

“The state of country music is in a few different states I think. Mostly it’s a mess. I see some artists in the Americana genre get labeled true country artists when, in reality, they fall short of what I consider true country music. They’re great at what they do, though. People are hungry for country heroes, they just don’t seem to be making those folks anymore, or they’re not getting discovered. I’m no purist in general, but I do believe in calling things what they truly are. That being said, thanks to folks like Jamey Johnson, true country music heroes still exist that keep the truth alive.” 

Be prepared to hear this name more in the future, so long as he can continue to toe the line with his love of substances, living the hard road life, and paying his dues, while also trying to earn his own Outlaw stripes to write songs about.

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The Creekers 

Every time music festivals decide to have multiple stages, there is always at least one artist on one of the smaller stages who makes an uncontested case for why they should have never been placed there in the first place. The Creekers were that band at the 2025 Master Musicians Fest. What seemed like half the festival’s total population suddenly descended into a little ravine where that stage sat as an impromptu happy hillbilly jam session commenced before them.

In front of the stage, a bunch of porch-stompers had gathered as The Creekers began to fire up their mini hillbilly orchestra, even though they had no porch to stomp on. The Creekers’ fiddle player Anna Blanton decided she was going to be the one to steal the show. Just like any decent fiddle player attempts to do at every performance, Blanton’s masterful ownership of her fiddle directly channeled into the audience as she rode the shoulders of a friend, taking her performance offstage and into the crowd as they closed out their set, leaving the audience yelling for more.

© 2025 Saving Country Music