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April 4-6, 2025

Word of South

Gary Yordon

An eight-time EMMY Award winner, Gary Yordon hosts the popular CBS Television political program, The Usual Suspects. Gary founded the media and political consulting firm, The Zachary Group. He is a National Award Winning columnist for Gannett Newspapers and author of the lifestyle book, Driving The Road of Life, With a Flat Tire. Gary will be […]

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Thomas Wynn & The Believers

Thomas Wynn & The Believers personifies rugged, yet uplifting spirited rock, sprinkled with southern soul R&B. Tunes brutally honest & heartfelt, the themes go beyond years of drugs, heartbreaks & hypocrisy to deliver a message of hope.  A combination of blistering rock and southern soul, this fiery ensemble has been playing the Orlando, Florida original […]

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Mark Woods

Mark Woods is Metro columnist for the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Fla. In 2011, he won the Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship, an award given to one writer in America each year. The fellowship allowed him to take a sabbatical and spend one year working on a project about the future of the national parks. During […]

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Randall “Big Daddy” Webster

Randall “Big Daddy” Webster’s ministry of blues reaches deep into the collective soul. He’s an accomplished singer-songwriter penning tunes for both himself and artists around the world. There’s an undeniable musical connection between Webster’s blues and his audience. Says Big Daddy, “The tradition of playing music from the soul (Ceol Dan Anum in Irish) is […]

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Brad Watson

Brad Watson is the author of two collections of stories and the novel The Heaven of Mercury, which was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award. His fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Granta, Ecotone, Electric Literature, and the Idaho Review, among other publications. He teaches at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. Since 2002, Brad had been trying […]

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Lu Vickers

Lu Vickers is the author of one novel and several books on Florida history, including Weeki Wachee, Thirty Years of Underwater Photography, and Cypress Gardens, America’s Tropical Wonderland, both of which received Florida Book awards: She has also received three Individual Artists Grants from Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs for fiction. In 2014, as she was in […]

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Vandaveer

Vandaveer is the song-singing, record-making, globetrotting project penned and put forth by Kentucky-based tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. With poignant, everyman narratives and striking, folk-based harmonies, Vandaveer loosely falls under the Americana umbrella, but the band regularly elbows their way into wider spaces with a kaleidoscopic assortment of sounds. Vandaveer shapeshifts from stage to studio and […]

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Up From Here

Up From Here is a pop punk band from Tampa, Florida. Initially conceived as an acoustic duo in 2014, Up From Here became a full pop punk band in January of 2015. In 2016 they have shared the stage with Hawthorne Heights, The Ataris, Handguns, Norma Jean, Johnny Craig, Famous Last Words, Austin Jones, I Set […]

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