Moonshiner’s Jamboree grows bigger each year

By Lauren Eakin
Special to the Register & Bee
Published: August 2, 2008

Moonshiner’s Jamboree co-founder Tim Smith formally refers to his annual festival in Climax as a bluegrass festival, with some of the best regional fiddling and banjo picking to be heard for miles around, he says.

But Smith, a mechanic by trade, says he and his wife, Shelby, began the event 10 years ago to pay homage to the many moonshiners he’s come to know and respect during the course of his work.

According to Smith, in 1993 a man who supplemented his family’s budget by distilling bootleg whiskey was killed by teenagers.

“He was a father. He was a husband,” Smith recalled. “(Moonshining) was just something he did on the side to make ends meet.”

It wasn’t long after that when Smith began learning of the connection between moonshiners, the bootleggers who transported the illicit brew and the evolution of NASCAR. According to Smith, some of the men who would go on to become NASCAR greats got their starts cleverly outrunning law enforcement while transporting bootleg whiskey on this area’s back roads.

Smith’s research led him further to host a program aired on The History Channel entitled “Rum Runners, Moonshiners and Bootleggers” and, just last yearhe co-hosted with Billy Ray Cyrus entitled “Hillbilly.”

The Smiths have hosted the Moonshiner’s Jamboree for 10 years now on their 100-acre farm. Thanks to the Internet, not only locals but campers travel from up and down the East Coast to hang out for what is now a two-day mega-event with nine bluegrass bands, a Mr. and Miss Moonshine Contest and a pre-70 auto cruise drive-in.

By the way, consumption of alcohol is strictly forbidden on site at the Moonshiner’s Jamboree.