Bluegrass & Barbecue in Georgia
The 22nd annual Bluegrass & Barbecue Festival takes place August 3 and 4, 2018, at the Dillard City Hall Fairground, 892 Franklin Street, Dillard, Georgia.
Two cooking classes are scheduled. Byron Chism of Bad Byron’s Specialty Food Products, conducts the first at 5:30 p.m. August 3. Byron is owner and a member of the Butt Rub wining team at the Jack Daniels World BBQ Championship contest 9 years in a row.
The second, at 3:30 p.m. August 4, is led by Jason Williams along with Shane Biddy of the Barbeque Depot. In 2016, Jason’s pro competition cooking team, The Porkaholics, won multiple top 10 finishes as well as 1st place pork in the Sip & Swine contest in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Jason will teach you how to choose the best products, meat preparation and techniques that will help you “Cook Like The Best!”
To top-off the cooking classes, Mike Brown, owner and vintner of 12 Spies Vineyard and Farms, will host a wine and BBQ pairing.
There will not be a barbecue competition this year, but there will be lots of food vendors, including BBQ.
And, of course there’s bluegrass (Dillard is in Rabun County in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains after all). The lineup of bluegrass bands features Dave Adkins Band and Shannon Slaughter. Also performing are Leipers Fork, Sons of the South, Doug Flowers Band, Shadow Ridge, Carolina Blue, Foxfire Boys, Curtis Blackwell & The Dixie Bluegrass Boys and Oliver Rice & The Blue Ridge Mountain Boys.
Tickets are available online. A one-day pass is $15, and a two-day is $25. Children 12 and younger get in free. Free parking and shuttle service is provided. The proceeds benefit local charities.
Picky editor’s note: This group keeps wanting to spell “barbecue” as “barbeque”. Your Road Trips Foodie can’t bear to misspell it in print, and will correct it as often as possible in these posts. Now, in the proper names of restaurants, that isn’t possible (just in case someone wants to find a website for said restaurant), but elsewhere? Yes. The abbreviation may be “BBQ” but when spelling out the whole word one uses a “c”. “Barbeque” would be pronounced “bar-beck”. Ummmm, no!
(Photo courtesy of Dillard Bluegrass & Barbecue)
