Ellsworth County Kansas Roots and Blues Festival

In the last days of September, the Midland Railroad Hotel in Wilson turns its performance rooms and its barn over to two days of roots and blues music. The hotel publishes the gathering on its own programme as the Roots & Blues Festival, a Friday-evening and Saturday run of performances that appears on the Wilson calendar in two thousand twenty-three, two thousand twenty-four and two thousand twenty-five, and, by one listing layer’s account, in two thousand twenty-six as well. A festival guide prints the name in the spelled-out form Roots and Blues Festival, while a concert-listing aggregator files the same weekend as the Midland Annual Roots & Blues Festival and the Annual Roots & Blues Festival. No layer read prints the county-prefixed title used at the head of this page; the forms above are the ones the record actually carries, and they are kept apart here exactly as each source prints them. Wilson sits in Ellsworth County, in the middle of Kansas, and it is not the county seat — that role belongs to the town of Ellsworth. What follows sticks closely to the layers: a small, hotel-run music weekend whose billing, line-ups and limits are stated as their sources give them.

About

The festival is, in the plainest terms, the Midland Railroad Hotel’s own production. The venue’s own site both programmes and hosts the event, and no separate committee, association or outside promoter is named in any layer read. That single fact shapes the weekend’s character: instead of spreading across a fairground or closing a main street, the gathering collects inside and around one historic railroad hotel, using the building and its barn as the performance spaces. The barn holds a named fixture of the Saturday programme, the Acoustic Lunch Show in The Barn, which the venue’s own site lists at noon on the Saturday of the two thousand twenty-four edition.

The documented shape is consistent across the layers. Performances begin on a Friday evening, continue with the Saturday midday acoustic session, and resume with a further Saturday programme from four in the afternoon. The music named in the record sits squarely in the roots, Americana and blues range, matching the name the hotel gives the weekend. Four editions are documented in some form. The first, on twenty-nine and thirty September two thousand twenty-three, rests on the venue’s own site; the second, billed by that same site as the second annual, followed on twenty-seven and twenty-eight September two thousand twenty-four; a festival guide carries an edition on twenty-six and twenty-seven September two thousand twenty-five; and a concert-listing aggregator, the weakest layer in this record, lists concerts on eighteen and nineteen September two thousand twenty-six.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Published name	Roots & Blues Festival, per the venue’s own site
Guide spelling	Roots and Blues Festival
Aggregator forms	Midland Annual Roots & Blues Festival; Annual Roots & Blues Festival
Host and organiser	Midland Railroad Hotel, Wilson
Performance spaces	The hotel and its barn
Town	Wilson, Ellsworth County, Kansas
County seat	Ellsworth; Wilson does not hold that role
Documented editions	Late September, two thousand twenty-three through two thousand twenty-six
Billing on record	Second annual, for two thousand twenty-four
Admission	No price or free-entry policy stated in any layer read

History

The festival’s own past is short in print, and this page keeps it that way. The venue’s own site bills the two thousand twenty-four edition as the second annual, and that billing is the only age claim the record makes for the event itself. It points towards a beginning shortly before the documented two thousand twenty-three edition, but the layers nowhere attach a founding year to the festival, and none is worked out here from the billing. The record also reaches no further backwards: no edition earlier than twenty-nine September two thousand twenty-three is documented in any layer, so the festival’s history, as far as print goes, begins with the line-up the hotel published for that weekend.

The building that houses the festival has a far longer paper trail, and the two must not be confused. A travel blog layer notes that the Midland Railroad Hotel was built in eighteen ninety-nine, in Wilson’s railroad era. That date belongs to the hotel’s history alone. It explains the setting — a nineteenth-century railroad hotel still working as a venue — but it says nothing about the age of the music weekend staged inside it, and it is not borrowed here to lend the festival a past longer than its own billing supports. Read together, the layers describe a young event in an old building: a festival carrying a second-annual billing in two thousand twenty-four, inside a hotel that had already stood for well over a century.

For a useful comparison, see the Ellsworth County Kansas After Harvest Czech Festival for another county festival.

What to Expect

Friday evening opens the weekend’s music. In the documented editions the first performances fall on the Friday: in two thousand twenty-three the venue’s own site placed Lem Sheppard on the Friday and Dustin Arbuckle and The Damnations on the Saturday, while in two thousand twenty-four the Friday programme ran from six in the evening with Tom Pevear and Kelley Hunt & The 5. Saturday then divides into two parts. At noon the barn hosts the Acoustic Lunch Show in The Barn, a quieter midday session named on the venue’s own programme, and from four in the afternoon a further run of sets carries the day onward.

Later layers extend the pattern rather than change it. A festival guide lists the Wilson weekend under the spelled-out name Roots and Blues Festival on twenty-six and twenty-seven September two thousand twenty-five, without printing a line-up in the material read. A concert-listing aggregator goes one step further for two thousand twenty-six, naming a Scott Ellison Band performance on Friday eighteen September and Brandon Santini on Saturday nineteen September under the Annual Roots & Blues Festival billing at the hotel. Those two thousand twenty-six names rest on that aggregator alone — the weakest layer used for this title — and no venue-issued line-up for that year appears in the record, so they are carried here as one listing’s claim rather than as the hotel’s confirmed programme. Across all four years the bill stays within roots, Americana and blues performers, in keeping with the name over the door.

Planning Your Visit

September anchors every documented edition: the closing days of the month in two thousand twenty-three and two thousand twenty-four, a similar slot in two thousand twenty-five, and, on the aggregator’s listing, a week earlier in two thousand twenty-six. Anyone travelling on the strength of a particular year’s dates should confirm them with the hotel before setting out, because the only two thousand twenty-six listing in the record comes from an aggregator rather than from the venue itself.

Money needs the same caution. None of the layers read prints a ticket price for the festival, and none describes entry as free either, so whether the performances carry a charge at the door cannot be told from the published record alone. The layers do print contact details for the hotel, and asking directly is the reliable route; those details are not reproduced on this page. Because the festival lives inside a working hotel, the natural base for the weekend is the Midland Railroad Hotel itself, with the barn and the performance rooms under one roof. Wilson is a small town, and Ellsworth, the county seat, is the nearest larger service centre in the county. Drivers should also allow for the ordinary rhythms of a small Kansas town in harvest season, when rooms, tables and roads are shared with the farm calendar as much as with festivalgoers.

A Sample Itinerary

A Friday arrival sets the weekend’s pace. Reach Wilson in the afternoon, settle into the hotel, and be in place for the evening’s first sets — in two thousand twenty-four the Friday programme began at six in the evening, and in two thousand twenty-three the Friday billing belonged to Lem Sheppard. Saturday starts more gently: the Acoustic Lunch Show in The Barn fills the noon hour, pairing the midday meal with the weekend’s quietest performances. The afternoon programme then runs from four, the slot the venue’s own site gives for the Saturday continuation in two thousand twenty-four, with Dustin Arbuckle and The Damnations holding the Saturday place in the two thousand twenty-three billing. A Sunday departure after a slow hotel breakfast rounds off a weekend that never asks visitors to stray far from the building.

How It Compares

Same-name festivals elsewhere are separate events, and the record keeps them that way. The Salmon Arm ROOTSandBLUES festival in British Columbia, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania Roots & Blues Festival, the former Roots N Blues festival in Columbia, Missouri, the Paola Roots Festival, the Small Town Roots festival in Winfield, the Paxico Blues Festival and Humboldt’s Middle of Everywhere Music Festival share words with this weekend and nothing else; none of their line-ups, dates or histories are imported here. The Wilson event is the smallest in scale among them as documented: a single hotel, its barn, two days and a handful of named acts, programmed by the venue itself rather than by a civic committee or a presenting society. That intimacy is its defining contrast with the larger multi-stage gatherings the roots-and-blues name usually announces.

A Visitor’s Checklist

• Confirm the year’s dates with the hotel before travelling
• Ask the hotel directly whether any admission charge applies
• Book early if you hope to stay at the Midland Railroad Hotel
• Plan for a Friday evening start and a Saturday noon session in the barn
• Keep Saturday afternoon open for the programme that begins at four
• Bring warm layers for cool late-September evenings in Kansas
• Treat aggregator line-ups as unconfirmed until the venue publishes its own
• Allow an hour to look around Wilson before the music starts

Beyond the Festival

The hotel rewards a slower look outside the performance hours. A travel blog layer dates the building to eighteen ninety-nine, when Wilson’s railroad traffic made a substantial trackside hotel worth building, and the barn that now hosts the acoustic lunch show belongs to that working past. Wilson itself is a small Ellsworth County town whose late-September calendar turns on harvest as much as on music, and the county seat at Ellsworth offers the services of a county town a short drive away. Visitors with an extra day can treat the festival as a base for the county’s quiet back roads rather than as a single-purpose trip, returning to the hotel each evening for the next set.

Why It Matters

A festival programmed by a hotel rather than by a town or a society is an unusual arrangement, and it gives this weekend its particular value. The Midland Railroad Hotel keeps roots, Americana and blues performers on a stage in a town of Wilson’s size, presented the event as an annual fixture by its second documented year, and folded the performances into the ordinary hospitality of the building, with meals, rooms and music sharing one address. For the county’s festival calendar the weekend adds a late-September entry of a different kind from the harvest-season gatherings around it: listening-focused, largely indoors and deliberately small.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the hotel print an ampersand in the festival’s name?

The venue’s own site publishes the event as the Roots & Blues Festival, with the ampersand, and that is the strongest name form in the record. A festival guide instead spells the name out as the Roots and Blues Festival, and a concert-listing aggregator files it under the longer forms Midland Annual Roots & Blues Festival and Annual Roots & Blues Festival. This page’s title follows the sheet that commissioned it; the layers’ own spellings are kept separate wherever each one is cited.

Who played at the earliest documented edition?

The venue’s own site documents twenty-nine and thirty September two thousand twenty-three, with Lem Sheppard performing on the Friday and Dustin Arbuckle and The Damnations on the Saturday, both at the Midland Railroad Hotel in Wilson. No earlier edition appears in any layer read, so that weekend stands as the starting point of the printed record.

What happens inside the barn on Saturday?

The barn hosts the Acoustic Lunch Show in The Barn, the Saturday midday session named on the venue’s own programme. In two thousand twenty-four it ran from noon, ahead of a further programme beginning at four in the afternoon, and it gives the weekend a quieter, seated counterweight to the Friday evening sets.

Is a two thousand twenty-six line-up confirmed by the venue?

Not in the record read. A concert-listing aggregator lists a Scott Ellison Band performance on Friday eighteen September two thousand twenty-six and Brandon Santini on Saturday nineteen September, under the Annual Roots & Blues Festival billing at the hotel. That aggregator is the weakest layer used for this title, and no venue-published programme for that year appears alongside it.

What to Expect From the Next Ellsworth County Kansas Roots and Blues Festival

How often is Ellsworth County Kansas Roots and Blues Festival held?

Documented editions fall in late September in each year from two thousand twenty-three through two thousand twenty-six, and the venue billed the two thousand twenty-four edition as the second annual, which presents the weekend as a yearly fixture on the hotel’s own programme.

When is the next Ellsworth County Kansas Roots and Blues Festival?

The latest date in the record is the aggregator’s listing for eighteen and nineteen September two thousand twenty-six, and nothing in the layers read looks past that listing to a later year. A further weekend would most plausibly follow the established late-September pattern, but only the hotel’s own programme can confirm a date, and none is stated here as fact.

Will the dates change?

The exact weekend shifts from year to year. The documented weekends ran twenty-nine to thirty September in two thousand twenty-three, twenty-seven to twenty-eight September in two thousand twenty-four and twenty-six to twenty-seven September in two thousand twenty-five, while the aggregator’s two thousand twenty-six listing sits a week earlier, so the exact Friday and Saturday are worth checking year by year.

Closing

The festival, as the record documents it, is a modest thing done deliberately: a railroad hotel in Wilson staging two September days of roots and blues under its own roof and in its own barn. Its printed past is brief — a second-annual billing, four documented late-September weekends and a handful of named performers — and this page has left it exactly that size, with every claim tied to the layer that carries it.