2026 Roots and Blues Recap (Pt. 1)
I was an official Lancaster Roots and Blues festival photographer in 2021, 2022, and 2024 and I loved almost every minute of it. This year’s Roots and Blues Festival was a much different experience.
My fellow photographers and I weren’t officially on-staff, but we did get all-access media passes.
It was still loads of fun, but nowhere near as intense as previous festivals. ‘Intense’ can still be fun for lunatics like me. It’s like the difference between a casual run and a race: both are fun, just in very different ways.
It’s hard to recap this year’s Roots and Blues Festival without talking about those first three gigs. Back then, I took thousands of photos of dozens of bands, Friday through Sunday, in numerous venues in downtown Lancaster (but mainly at my assigned location, the Elks Lodge). I averaged nearly 20,000 steps each day, despite being officially assigned to just that one venue. That’s because our crew took every opportunity between breaks to see other bands at other spots like Tellus, Zoetropolis, and The Village.
The 2021 Roots and Blues Photography Crew
Elks was a great home base for me, though. I had plenty of access to all sides of the stage, a place to stash my gear case, and a high-top all to myself. The lodge offered good but inexpensive food and drinks, and the crowds and staff were always fun and respectful. Elks was also the place to be for the fabled Saturday Night All-Star Jam, where members from bands across the festival got together to, well, jam.
That very first year, I had a terrible lower back problem and begged my doctor to extend Prednisone treatment so that I could handle carrying around all that weight and being on my feet for an entire three-day weekend. No way I was backing out. At the same time, my wife was out of town all weekend. I was on my own at home, rolling in after midnight each night, exhausted, and setting my alarm to get up early to start charging batteries and offloading footage and do it all again.
Come Monday, long after the bands were all back home and getting ready for whatever was next, it was time for me to start processing all those images: importing and organizing all the shots, integrating them into my backup system, and reviewing each show’s photos, flagging keepers and deleting unusable or redundant shots. Each photographer was ultimately responsible for a minimum of 20 usable shots per show. With that in mind, it wasn’t uncommon to snap 100 or more shots per set, just to be safe. Only once was 20 a real stretch, fortunately.
Then came several days of developing the photos - making decisions about cropping, color balance, highlights, sharpening, and so on. I always enjoy this part of the process. Brew some coffee, put on the good headphones, crack my knucklew, and have at it. Until I get near the finish line and then suddenly I’m totally over it. I stayed mostly in Adobe Lightroom. Round-tripping to Photoshop was strictly for crucial shots that might have otherwise been ruined (usually because of some obnoxious distraction in the foreground or background). Spend too much time in Photoshop, and your time and hard drive space drain away like your ability to make good decisions three drinks in at the Belvy.
Finally, sharing time. I published each band’s gallery to my photo web site and let them know how to retrieve them. The latter task wasn’t as easy as you’d imagine. Then Facebook sharing and tagging, one performance at a time.
I had to learn a lot about getting it right in-camera to make post-processing go as quickly as possible. Live music photography in darkened, crowded venues with terrible LED lighting requires something much different than outdoor nature photography.
Speaking of software, it’s gotten so much better in just the last few years – especially and crucially, noise reduction. The only way to freeze action with an f/2.8 or f/4 aperture (which doesn’t give you a lot of depth to begin with) is to push your camera’s ISO capabilities to the max. I shot this year’s festival at 16,000 ISO – something I wouldn’t have dared try during the first festival. Lightroom’s noise reduction modules and third-party AI-driven tools can now produce clean, sharp images without that plastic-y feel high noise reduction can often produce.
Anyway, back to 2026. I was ready to roll with my old-school Nikon D850 and my go-to live music lens, the venerable 24-70 f/2.8. It’s a heavy setup that requires a special strap. But for me, that was packing light. Normally I’d have my big Pelican case backstage at Elks and pick and choose lenses from it throughout the day.
The first item on my itinerary had to be Sweet Leda at the Holiday Inn Imperial Ballroom, Friday night. I’d never actually seen the band perform, just combinations of some of their members with other bands, usually at the midnight ‘all-star’ jam sessions on Saturday night at Elks. My wife had never seen them before, either, and they lived up to the expectations I set for her.
Julie and Jaime, Sweet Leda
Saturday found me mostly at Zoetropolis. I was reasonably well-rested to photograph Band of Llamas, The Alex Warner Band (which I’d agreed in advance to cover), and festival stalwart Bobby Gentilo. Good times!
Sunday was low-key; there were only two performances I felt I couldn’t miss. Amani Burnham blew me away, and I’m patiently awaiting his first album in May. And although I’ve seen him dozens of times in Lancaster county, I’d never seen Corty Byron at Roots and Blues and never managed to get a good photo. This was my chance.
All in all, I saw 9 bands across all three days – a far cry from the normal 14 or 15. But I can’t lie - the freedom to roam wherever I wanted, or bail if I just wasn’t feeling it, was nice. I did skip the late-night Saturday all-star jam, held this year at the Holiday Inn’s Imperial Ballroom. I tried – I really did. I knew Amani Burnham would be there, with ringleader Bobby capping the second day as only he can. But before Gabe Stillman even wrapped up his set, I told friends I was feeling like a burnt match and headed home. Getting older, I guess.
Gabe Stillman
In the end, I still took a ton of photos (and incorporated video, my latest fascination, for the first time). When all was said and done - after the galleries and social shares were finished - I felt good about the work. The bands were grateful, the fans seemed to love reliving those moments, I helped promote the festival, I drank plenty of beers with friends, and I got to spend time pursuing my creative hobbies.
I loved the generational spread, too. I don’t know if this was intentional, but enlisting Amani Burnham, Zoey Noble, and Alex Warner to play the same festival as veterans Clarence Spady and Kid Davis really kept things interesting. Alex and Amani are such amazing guitarists already, and I’m probably a decade older than they are - combined. Which means it’s going to be fun to see what the future holds for them. Zoey is always great, but I didn’t get to see her this time.
Amani Burnhan, up-and-coming guitar virtuoso
Roots and Blues has been good to me. Each festival puts me in an environment where I can meet lots of new people and make new friends – musicians and their friends and families; stage, lighting, and sound crews; and other photographers and music industry people. I think that’s the part of the experience I’d miss the most if it ever comes to an end. Let’s hope it never does!
