A Festival With Some Kick!
Some Tennessee festivals have headliners. Shelbyville has headliners, cast iron cobbler, pioneer skills, and mules. Plenty of mules. For four days in September, that combination makes perfect sense.
The American Mule and Bluegrass Festival returns September 24 through 27 at Cooper Steel Arena on the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration Grounds. Founded in 2021 by Wartrace native Marty Ray Gordon, the festival gathers several pieces of Tennessee’s rural heritage into one weekend without treating them like artifacts behind glass.
Instead, there are competitions to watch, strings to pick, pioneer skills to practice, and supper to cook.
Mules Take Center Stage
The festival’s mule competitions give the weekend its four-legged centerpiece, while pioneer demonstrations, arts and crafts vendors, and food trucks keep things moving beyond the arena. Then there’s the cast iron cooking competition, where brisket and beans, cornbread, apple cobbler, and other dishes put an old kitchen standby back to work.
Bluegrass supplies the soundtrack. The 2026 music lineup includes Steve Hall and Friends, James Stembridge Family Band, Lorianna Carter, GrassKickers, and Stones River Bluegrass Band. The schedule is subject to change, so checking before heading out is the sensible move.
What ties all of it together is a focus on skills and traditions that still have something to teach.
Passing It Along
That’s especially clear in the festival’s Jr Mule Skinner Program, which introduces participants to mules, bluegrass music, and pioneer skills. Heritage education can get awfully sleepy when reduced to dates and display cases. Put a mule in the lesson plan and things tend to perk up.
That hands-on approach gives the festival a purpose beyond filling a September weekend. In a state where agriculture, traditional music, and rural skills have shaped generations of communities, passing that knowledge along keeps the connection intact.
Four-day weekend tickets are $15, while one-day passes are $10. For that, visitors get four days of picking, cooking, competing, and proof that Tennessee tradition still has some kick left in it.
Find more celebrations happening across the state in the Guide to Tennessee festivals directory: https://www.guidetotennessee.com/festivals
