Muddy Roots takes All Kinds

Ten Takeaways From Muddy Roots 2025

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I went out of town last weekend to a festival.  Knowing Muddy Roots would be full of punks, metal heads, hobo band hippies etc I figured the best way to remember this year was to write down a list of the 10 best tattoos or hair cuts or whatever.  Sometimes you write the list and sometimes the list writes you.  That is especially true if whiskey is involved.  And if you are at Muddy Roots, whiskey can definitely be involved.

Ten things.  Somewhat fashion related.  Muddy Roots 2025.

1.  Some folks dye their hair in a leopard pattern.  Others get head tattoos with a leopard pattern.  Both are acceptable.

2.  If your name is Emerald, you could potentially have a face tattoo of shiny green crystals.  Just a thought.  Maybe a little specific.  Ruby?

3.  Recommendation for the guys on a hot day:  A kilt but with pepperoni pizza print fabric.  Don’t forget a matching t-shirt and cheese white shoulder pads.  Who among us hasn’t forgotten shoulder pads?

4.  You know, there’s a lot that has been and could be said about the male gaze and women’s breasts, but what about when there are googly eyes covering the nipples?   Are they gazing back?  A friend wanted to send a pic back to his wife but we realized that there are some things you can only witness in person.  (Such is Muddy Roots and beautifully militant performance art.)  This woman immediately knows who has looked at her chest because they are dying of laughter.  Genius?

5.  I didn’t realize the band DEVO made underwear.

6.  It’s not unusual for bands like the Faction or Casualties to encourage stage diving or very specific moves in “the pit”.  Think of the strangest aerobics class imaginable.  “I wanna see a circle pit!”  “You know what we haven’t seen anybody do this show?  Puke from dancing!  I wanna see it!”  It feels like an off menu niche Peloton option until you see one of the punks is actually wearing an exercise leotard!  “This next song is about the oppression of First Peoples!”  FYI: the amount of dust kicked up means you want to bring a handkerchief.  Remember to hydrate.

7.  There were as many fiddles, upright basses, and banjos as there were guitars.  There was just as much the possibility of hearing an ancient folk song as a rap tune or a cover of a Black Sabbath song gone sideways. Straw hats and flower dresses are just as punk as a sleeve of faded tattoos from 1991.  So is ear protection.  Even better with all three.

8.  GWAR was not at this Muddy Roots but there were balloon fights, tortilla fights, blow up alien dolls in the pit, two-step dancing, and Frank Turner singalongs.  Especially during a Frank Turner singalong, your shoes are going to get ruined a little. That lady with clown makeup puking on them will get you every time.

9.  Oh yeah, there was a lot of clown makeup.  I don’t think this was a Juggalo thing.  Or at least, more implicitly than explicitly so.

10.  Wear what you want.  This includes normal clothes as well as bondage gear or some mixture of the two.  Fruit costumes sold separately.

If you’ve never heard of it, Muddy Roots takes place every year at the June Bug Ranch north of Cookeville. I’ll be the first to say that I wasn’t sure what to expect from a punk festival in somewhat rural Tennessee but it’s a safe, fun place where feral kids roam free, Nazis aren’t welcome, and people genuinely look out for each other.  Sure they have used Narcan out there and people break bones, but I’ve seen over a hundred people throw cash into a PBR twelve pack box to help someone out.  We pick up our people who have fallen in the circle pit of life.

It’s something bigger than just here too.  The festival’s more DIY than several of the large festivals that happen these days but it’s really grown.  They have sister festivals in Europe and South America as well as a Rustic Stomp that’s more all Americana.

The fest attracts all kinds of bands.  There are punks from Murfreesboro that usually play at [REDACTED].  (Seriously, that’s what they call it in tour listings.)  But also you’ll see large national acts like Frank Turner or Amigo the Devil.  Smaller stages have well known busking hobos more likely to play at a union strike.  There’s punks from Cali like El Nada or from Atlanta like Upchuck.  Argentinian travelers Angry Zeta.  Bondage dance music.  Classically trained musicians from New Orleans like Ponch Bueller or Appalachian free spirit storytellers like Sparrow Smith.  Each year there are fringe weirdos like Bob Log or Reverend Beatman which you’ll just have to Google.  Hail ye merry angry olde Metal Dudez versus bubble machines.  Nashville’s Hans Kondor never disappoints.  Neither does Triangle Fire’s posi-core public service announcements punctuated by hysterical scream crush bombs mellowed by silly string and pool noodles.  What was that?  The best bands are often ones you have never heard before.

While there are always fresh faces, Muddy Roots always has classic punk favorites like TSOL who have been playing punk since forever, took some time to be a glam band, and now wear suits and look like your dad.  In fact we found out the bassist is soon to be the son in law of the lead singer.  Imagine playing bass in your father-in-law’s seminal SoCal punk band?  What are their Thanksgivings like?  

Muddy roots really is an intergenerational thing where older punks give the younger set a venue to carry the torch.   It was oddly poetic at the end to have James Hunnicutt playing kind of a smooth, folky singer/songwriter set to wind it all down.  In a finale to the finale he played the theme song to Raising Arizona.  You have this quirky outlaw family comedy thrust into your brain and that is at its core what Muddy Roots is going for.  A couple just wants to love a child so much that they kidnap one.

Here’s some lines from the end of that movie:

“And it seemed Iike, well… our home. lf not Arizona, then a Iand not too far away, where all parents are strong and wise and capabIe and all the chiIdren are happy and beIoved.  I don’t know.  Maybe it was Utah.”

I think at its core, the artist is struggling for justice and love, howling and a little crazy but will give you the last of their bottle that’s holding them together.  That’s Muddy Roots. The love of some kind of family.  Weird and all.  Fighting for what’s right one two-step at time.  A revolution built on dancing.