Summertime in Music City
A Rambling about Will Hoge
There’s a particular kind of confidence that only comes from an artist still growing decades into their career. Not confidence rooted in nostalgia or legacy, but in curiosity. In momentum. In the belief that the next great thing might still be ahead of you. Watching Will Hoge over the last two years has felt like watching exactly that kind of artist at work.
So let me take you back to December 2024 to talk about July 25th and 26th of this summer.
At 3rd & Lindsley, Hoge celebrated Carousel, the record he self-released in 2001, with a full-band hometown performance that felt less like an anniversary show and more like a reminder of just how alive rock and roll can still feel in the right hands. And then, because Hoge seemingly understands that live music should occasionally flirt with impossibility, he brought out rock legend Dan Baird.
For at least one more night, Baird played like his hands were born on fire.
The chemistry between Hoge and Baird was palpable—not simply mutual admiration, but a kind of musical kinship that became its own force onstage. Their energy transformed into another member of the band entirely, pushing songs into that rare territory where performance starts feeling larger than rehearsal or preparation. The evening felt magical in the way truly unrepeatable concerts often do, and afterward I told Hoge that I was certain it was the best show I would ever see him play.
Months later, he proved me wrong.
On the Cayamo cruise, Hoge assembled a once-in-a-lifetime lineup featuring Brady Blade on drums, Steve Fishell on pedal steel, Scottish Craig on
guitar, with Bill Payne and Mimi Naja sitting in. Blade literally climbed onto the stage from the audience, landing behind the kit exactly as the drums came into the first song, which somehow perfectly captured the looseness and trust defining the set.
What followed was a masterclass in bandleading. Hoge understood that for one fleeting hour this extraordinary collection of musicians was his band, and every player committed fully to that reality. Despite the staggering individual talent onstage, no one overplayed. No one fought for space. Instead, each musician leaned into the collective possibility of the moment. The result was less a concert than a rock-and-roll reverie.
Then came December 2025.
Back again at 3rd & Lindsley for the release show of his fifteenth studio album, Sweet Misery, Hoge arrived with an almost entirely new lineup, save for longtime bassist Christopher Griffiths. And somehow, impossibly, the show felt even stronger than the year before.
Or maybe “stronger” is the wrong word.
Different, certainly. Looser in places. More adventurous. More emotionally elastic. At some point comparisons stop mattering because what Hoge is really demonstrating at this stage of his career is evolution itself. Here is a musician in his fifties who is still progressing—not just as a songwriter, but as a performer, arranger, producer, and bandleader. There is no sense of someone coasting on craft or reputation. If anything, Hoge seems increasingly energized by risk and collaboration.
That collaborative instinct has quietly expanded beyond his own records over the last several years. Alongside continuing to make deeply personal albums, Hoge has steadily become a trusted producer for other artists, helping shape records with the same care and musical intuition that define his live shows. He’s currently finishing another album with Red Wanting Blue, continuing a body of production work that feels driven less by ego than by genuine investment in other musicians.
Which is exactly why it makes sense that Hoge’s next move is producing a festival.
This July 25th and 26th, Hoge will curate and host a festival at Eastside Bowl, and the deeper you think about it, the more inevitable it feels. Over the last decade, one thing has become clear about Hoge: he will use whatever leverage he has to help other musicians and artists. That instinct is baked into how he builds bands, how he collaborates, how he produces records, and now, how he’s envisioning this festival.
Rather than simply stacking the lineup with familiar names or safe bets, Hoge says he is intentionally pairing artists across generations. Bands in their fifties alongside bands in their twenties. His hope is that something gets exchanged in the process: hard-earned road wisdom and musicianship traded alongside youthful curiosity, fearlessness, and joy. It’s a lineup philosophy rooted less in nostalgia than in continuity—a belief that scenes survive when generations remain in conversation with each other.
And true to form, Hoge is also trying to keep ticket prices as affordable as possible. After thirty years of touring and playing festivals himself, he’s approaching this event from the perspective of both artist and fan, trying to preserve the best parts of festival culture while avoiding some of its increasingly inaccessible realities. The goal, it seems, is not exclusivity or spectacle for spectacle’s sake, but community.
Which feels increasingly rare.
At a moment when so much of the music industry feels algorithmic, overpriced, or transactional, Hoge’s festival already sounds like an extension of the qualities that make his best performances resonate in the first place: trust, generosity, risk, and genuine love for live music as a shared experience.
And maybe that’s the real story here. Not simply that Will Hoge is still making great records and playing great shows after three decades. Plenty of artists endure. What feels rarer is watching someone continue expanding this far into their career while pulling other people forward with them.
If the last few years are any indication, July 25th and 26th at Eastside Bowl won’t just be another festival weekend in Nashville. Will Hoge’s Eastside Ramble will be a reflection of the kind of artistic ecosystem Hoge has spent years quietly building—one where experience and curiosity still have something to teach each other.
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mikewindy=Mikey Mitchell
Arts and Social Practice professor at Tennessee State University, an HBCU in Nashville, TN.
I am a social practice artist with a painter’s eye and a sculptor’s hand, blending folk and conceptual traditions. My work uses color and humor as resistance to the negative ramifications of living in an increasingly complicated world. My signature, mikewindy, is a love note to my wife Windy, my first name and hers, lowercase and conjoined.
