The Hummingbird Music Project is the brainchild of restaurant owner and musicologist Doug Beatty. He is known for the great food and music venues he has conceived, founded and managed over the last two decades in Virginia, North and South Carolina and Tennessee. Currently he is the proprietor and manager of the Bone Fire Smokehouse and Musictorium in historic Abingdon, Virginia. In addition to always bringing outstanding regional and national musicians to the stages in his restaurants, he has a history of bringing top-notch talent to the musical events he has founded and managed for the local communities wherever he has had businesses. These include many popular long running music series and festivals that are still held every year.
- The Asheville Brewgrass Festival which is the south’s most popular beer festival.
- The Knoxville Brewers Jam which is always a sell out.
- The Twilight Alive concert series in Kingsport as part of their economic development plan.
- The Racks by the Tracks music series in Kingsport which is the region’s largest BBQ & Blues music event with over 10,000 attendees.
- The Thursday Jams and January Jams concert series in Abingdon as part of their economic development strategy.
For the past 4 years, Doug has been working on the Hummingbird Music Project, a cultural exchange program between the Appalachian Mountain area of the United States and the State of Michoacan in Mexico. This is a musical collaboration between American musicians playing traditional Appalachian music and Purhepecha musicians playing their traditional version of Mexican music. The purpose is to unite these musicians together and mix the music of the two musical cultures through a multi-national 10 day concert series called the Hummingbird International Music Festival on Lago de Patzcuaro. He is working on filming a documentary about this project and the festival. When the bands collaborate and jam together, they may capture a recording of the birth of a new genre of music as the musicians share and influence each other.
Doug’s team has recruited talented musicians and a high quality technical staff. They are bringing the best in American talent in order to provide the best presentation of Appalachian music to distant places in the world.
