We caught up with Wide Open Country’s 2024 Song Contest First and Second Place category winners to learn about the inspiration behind their songs. A Nashville-based singer-songwriter with an honest, ...

Music has been a passion of Frances Litterski for almost her entire life. Litterski remembers writing her first song when she was still in elementary school. Now the winner of Wide Open Country’s 2025 ...

Songwriter Susan Gibson wrote the song "Wide Open Spaces" after moving away for college and trying to express to her mother that she needed room to make her big mistakes. She needed new faces. She ...

Eighth-generation ballad singer Donna Ray Norton of Madison County performs during the Raleigh Wide Open music festival in downtown Raleigh on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025. The event features live bluegrass, ...

This weekend kicks off the Raleigh Wide Open Music Festival, designed to be a "a continuation of the bluegrass festival tradition" that's filled the streets of the state capital for a decade with ...