Backwoods At Mulberry Mountain cancels amid coronavirus spread

As the world grapples with the spread of the novel coronavirus, the worldwide. pandemic has claimed another festival casualty. Organizers of Backwoods at Mulberry Mountain recently announced that this year’s festival is canceled. The gathering, originally slated for June 4th–7th at Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, AR, will now take place in April 2021.

In a statement, the festival’s production team stated that they had been watching domestic developments closely and holding out hope, but that “things are getting too close for the safety of our event.” As one of the last April events to postpone or cancel, festival organizers laid out their reasoning for this decision:

1. We realize that the fall season is going to be oversaturated with events that have been rescheduled, along with the original already scheduled fall events.  We wanted to make sure everyone can enjoy everything they have already planned for fall, give some breathing space to get back to normal, and not miss out on any other events due to the financial stress this is putting on all of us.
2. Artists will also be very busy in the fall due to all the rescheduling, and we want to keep the same lineup as much as possible (maybe adding some surprises!) This will give us the best chances for that.
3. We believe we will be clearly out of the woods with this crisis by then.
4. With the CDC recommending no crowds larger than 50 people for the next 8 weeks (until May 10th), this will put us too close to make the call after the 8 week period if we were still needed to postpone due to the virus. Making a call so close to our event is not fair to all of you, our vendors, staff, crew, and other supporters who already may have made plans or blocked their calendars.

The statement noted that specific April dates will be announced soon, and that all tickets purchased for the original June dates will be honored for the rescheduled gathering.