The Holler Choir on the porch of an old log cabin, with green mountains behind them

Case study · Music festival

How The Winter Ramble runs a county-wide Appalachian music festival from one place

Four days of mountain music in rooms across Henderson County, North Carolina, planned by one producer. We built the festival's screening, committee, venue and budget tools with him, one working session at a time.

The short version

The Winter Ramble is a celebration of traditional mountain music that takes over Henderson County, North Carolina, for four days every February. There is no main stage: the festival happens in the county's breweries, vineyards, listening rooms and theaters, each one hosting its own part of the weekend. Producer Ryan Price plans all of it, and for its second year he set out to turn a loose network of venues into one festival with one plan and one budget. Since March we have met with Ryan more than ten times and built the tools he runs it on: screening for more than 150 acts, a committee that scores them, a planning board for every room, and a budget that keeps itself up to date. The festival is February 25 - 28, 2027. We will update this story with what he learns.

About the festival

A celebration of Appalachian music, in rooms across a county

The Winter Ramble celebrates the music of the mountains and the people carrying it forward: old-time string bands, ballad singers, bluegrass and gospel, and the songwriters shaped by them. Alongside ticketed concerts it programs workshops, jam sessions, dance, storytelling and shape-note singing, and its home is Henderson County, with support from the county's Tourism Development Authority.

The festival does not build a stage. It works with the places already there: breweries and taprooms, vineyards, barns, churches, listening rooms and theaters. Each venue partner hosts its share of the weekend, and the festival handles booking, promotion and ticketing for all of them.

The challenge

One producer, a county full of venues, and nothing tying them together

Every venue ran on its own. In its first year, the Winter Ramble worked more like a coordinator than a festival. Each venue booked and paid its own acts, and each sold tickets on its own system. Even at rooms Ryan knew well, he could not see sales at a glance.

The festival was growing fast. The second year brings more venues, more than three times as many ticketed shows, and a screening list of more than 150 acts. Spreadsheets could hold the list. They could not move an act from first contact to a confirmed slot in the right room.

Programming is a committee decision. Acts are chosen with a curation committee of volunteers, each with their own view of what belongs at the Ramble. Gathering their opinions across shared sheets and side conversations made it hard to see where the group actually stood.

The money had to add up, room by room. The festival's goal is to become financially stable over its first few years. That means knowing what each venue's talent costs, what each free show needs, and what sponsors have actually committed, all while the deals are still moving.

Roadi is the keeper, the source of truth.

Ryan Price

Producer, The Winter Ramble

The partnership

Built with a producer, in the middle of producing

Ryan is a design partner. He shaped the festival account while he was using it to plan a real festival, which meant every feature was tested against a real decision the week it shipped.

More than ten working sessions ran between March and October 2026, with Ryan and Roadi.

It was built on his real festival. Last year's schedule, artists, venues and sponsors went in early, so the tools were judged against data Ryan already knew.

Work shipped between sessions. An ask from one call was usually on screen by the next, and Ryan's feedback set what came after.

That's why I'm excited about being part of this at this early stage. What you've built here is really powerful. Now I just gotta get in and populate it. This is gonna be my system for this year.

Ryan Price

Producer, The Winter Ramble

He asked, we built

What they neededWhat we built

A real festival budget, not a spreadsheet
A budget with planned and actual for every category, and a talent budget for every venue that fills in as acts are booked
"X of N shows booked" without adding it up by hand
A summary across the whole festival: rooms over budget, slots still open and money already committed
One click from an act to everything about it
Every act opens straight into its full record, with the expected draw, what the band asked for and who represents them
Free shows that the venue and the festival pay for together
A split for every free show: what the venue covers and what the festival covers
Sponsor goals tracked like a fundraiser
Sponsorship goals with pledged and received amounts, kept apart from the talent budget
Venues that can see their own shows
A free login for each venue, showing its rooms, its shows and the bands waiting for its yes

Why we built it

What we built for the Winter Ramble is now open to every festival on Roadi.

Most festival software assumes one site, one gate and one stage. The Winter Ramble is the other kind of festival: a weekend spread across a community's own rooms, where the venues are partners and the music is the point. That kind of festival is everywhere, and it has mostly been run on spreadsheets and goodwill.

Roadi exists to make live music work for the people who make it. A festival that books local and regional artists into independent rooms is that mission at county scale. So instead of asking Ryan to fit his festival into a tool built for a fairground, we built the festival account around how he actually works.

Everything we built with him is now the foundation of Roadi for festivals. A downtown music crawl, a heritage festival or a weekend of shows across a town's venues that signs up today gets everything we built with the Winter Ramble from day one.

As we get this thing built in Roadi, it's just gonna be more and more valuable to me, but also to anyone that's doing similar things.

Ryan Price

Producer, The Winter Ramble

How it works

The festival management software the Winter Ramble runs on

One account for the whole festival: the artists who apply, the committee that chooses, the venues that host and the money that makes it work.

Submissions and screening

Every act in one list, from first application to booked

Artists apply through the festival's own website, and every application lands in a single screening list. Acts can be tagged by tradition and filtered by region, so the local old-time band and the touring bluegrass act are easy to find.

Click any act and its full record opens: what the band asked for, who represents them and the draw you expect. When an act has played the festival before, last year's draw is right there to start from.

The screening list for local acts, with genre, status, committee rating and a link to each act's music — Shown with sample data

Curation committee

A committee that scores every act, with no logins to manage

The producer invites the committee and sets the categories that matter to this festival. Each reviewer scores acts from a private link, on a phone or a laptop.

Scores add up to averages for every act, so the conversation starts from where the committee actually stands rather than from whoever spoke last.

Committee rankings: acts ordered by their average committee score, with returning acts marked Alumni — Shown with sample data

Venue planning

Every room's weekend on one board

Recruit venues through the same pipeline as acts, then lay out each room's weekend: how many slots, which are ticketed, which are free, where the workshops and jams go.

When acts are confirmed, they move onto the festival schedule across every venue. Roadi will not let two sets overlap in the same room, and it warns you when two headliners would play at the same time in different rooms.

The venue planning board: each venue as a row, with ticketed, free and market blocks across the festival days and confirmed acts placed in them — Shown with sample data

Picks for venues

Venues choose their bands, and the answer comes straight back

The producer proposes a shortlist of acts to each venue. The venue answers yes, maybe or no, and every answer flows back into planning.

Venues that want more can log in for free and see their own shows and the picks waiting on them. They never see another venue's numbers.

A venue's Bands and Picks tab: the venue's answers came back as two yes, one maybe and one no, sorted under each heading — Shown with sample data

I want to create an ecosystem for the venues, because I have all these venues, and for me, it's what I do every day. For them, it's a random weekend in February.

Ryan Price

Producer, The Winter Ramble

Budget and sponsors

A festival budget that keeps itself up to date

Every category has a planned and an actual figure, and talent and sponsorship fill in from the booking pipeline as deals move. Each venue gets its own talent budget, with a meter that turns red when a room runs over.

Confirmed and tentative deals are kept apart, so a hold never inflates the total. Free shows carry their own split between what the venue covers and what the festival covers, and sponsorship goals track pledged against received.

Talent budget by venue: each room's target, committed and remaining money, with two rooms flagged over budget and tentative deals called out — Shown with sample data

Last year's festival

Last year's data, inside the plan for this year

The 2026 festival's schedule, artists, venues, workshops and sponsors live in Roadi, one tab each, instead of in an old export.

When an act returns, last year's draw is ready to prefill. At the end of each festival the year is closed out, so 2027 becomes the starting point for 2028.

Past Festival Data for 2025: the year's totals, then the archived lineup with each act's stage, night, draw and guarantee — Shown with sample data

Fiddler Josh Goforth smiling in an apple orchard — Artists from the 2026 Winter Ramble lineup. Photos courtesy of The Winter Ramble and its 2026 artists.

The duo Admiral Radio with acoustic guitars in a field of tall grass — Artists from the 2026 Winter Ramble lineup. Photos courtesy of The Winter Ramble and its 2026 artists.

Built for how it works

Made for a festival run with partners

A multi-venue festival depends on people who do not work for it: venue owners, volunteer reviewers, artists, sponsors and community partners. Roadi gives each of them a place in the plan without extra work.

The committee needs no account

Reviewers score acts from a private link. Nobody on a volunteer committee has to set up a password to take part.

Every venue gets its own dashboard

Venue partners log in free to see their shows, their talent budget and the bands waiting on their answer. Each one sees only its own part of the festival, so the producer can share openly with every room.

Every application lands in one place

Artists, venues, sponsors and partners apply on the festival's own website, and every answer arrives in Roadi already sorted by type.

Sponsors tracked like a fundraiser

Set a goal for each sponsorship and see what has been pledged and what has actually come in, kept apart from the talent budget.

Ticket sales beside the budget

Sales and capacity come in every day from the festival's own Ticket Tailor account, so the producer sees what each show has sold next to what it costs.

Community partners have a pipeline

Arts councils, schools and heritage groups get their own pipeline, from first contact to confirmed, beside the venues and sponsors.

Before and after

Where the work lives now

Task	Before	With Roadi
Artist submissions	Emails and form exports, merged by hand	One screening list, filtered by tradition, region and status
Committee review	Shared sheets and side conversations	Each reviewer scores on the festival's own categories, and the averages add themselves up
Venue coordination	Every venue on its own, with its own numbers	Every room on one board, with slots, budgets and the acts proposed to it
Matching bands to rooms	Memory and a phone call	A shortlist for each venue, answered yes, maybe or no
The budget	A spreadsheet, rebuilt every time a deal changed	Live totals from the booking pipeline, with confirmed and tentative kept apart
Ticketing	Each venue on its own ticketing site	Ticket sales coming in from the festival's own ticketing account

Artist submissions

Before

Emails and form exports, merged by hand

With Roadi

One screening list, filtered by tradition, region and status

Committee review

Before

Shared sheets and side conversations

With Roadi

Each reviewer scores on the festival's own categories, and the averages add themselves up

Venue coordination

Before

Every venue on its own, with its own numbers

With Roadi

Every room on one board, with slots, budgets and the acts proposed to it

Matching bands to rooms

Before

Memory and a phone call

With Roadi

A shortlist for each venue, answered yes, maybe or no

The budget

Before

A spreadsheet, rebuilt every time a deal changed

With Roadi

Live totals from the booking pipeline, with confirmed and tentative kept apart

Ticketing

Before

Each venue on its own ticketing site

With Roadi

Ticket sales coming in from the festival's own ticketing account

Producing a festival across many venues?

See everything a festival gets on Roadi, from the first application to the last settlement.

Roadi for festivals

By the numbers

What's in place for 2027

Planning, not results

acts in screening for 2027: 150+acts in screening for 2027
committee reviews: 140+committee reviews
venues confirmed: 12venues confirmed
acts proposed to venues: 70+acts proposed to venues
days across Henderson County: 4days across Henderson County
working sessions since March: 10+working sessions since March

What's next

The road to February, and past it

March 2026
First conversation
Ryan walks us through a festival that runs across a county, not a single field.
Summer 2026
The producer's toolkit takes shape
Budgets, venue talent targets, sponsor goals and last year's festival brought into Roadi.
July to August 2026
Artist submissions open
Applications from the festival's website land straight in Roadi for screening.
Fall 2026
The committee scores, the venues pick
Reviewers rate every act, and venues start answering yes, maybe or no to the bands proposed to them.
February 25 - 28, 2027(planned)
The Winter Ramble
Four days of mountain music in rooms across Henderson County, North Carolina.
Spring 2027(planned)
Close the year, plan the next
The 2027 edition is closed out in Roadi and becomes the starting point for 2028.

Volunteers, from sign-up to check-in

Volunteers already apply on the Winter Ramble's website and land in Roadi. Before February, Ryan builds his crew there: shifts at each venue, a schedule link for every volunteer, check-in on the day, and a note on who to invite back next year. The Winter Ramble is the first festival to use it.

What he will measure

Shows and venues, tickets sold against capacity, talent spend against each venue's budget, and sponsorship pledged against received.

We will update this story after the 2027 Winter Ramble, with what worked, what did not, and what we changed.

I'm gonna be talking to venues, bands, sponsors, partners, volunteers, and using Roadi to build the festival out. That's not only saving me time, it's allowing me to do this without having to hire an admin person.

Ryan Price

Producer, The Winter Ramble

Questions from festival producers

What producers like Ryan ask before they move their festival onto Roadi.

What is a multi-venue music festival?

A multi-venue festival spreads its shows across many existing rooms instead of building one big stage. The Winter Ramble, for example, runs in breweries, vineyards, listening rooms and theaters across Henderson County, North Carolina, so each venue hosts its own part of the weekend.

Is there festival management software for multi-venue festivals?

Yes. Roadi has a festival account built with The Winter Ramble that covers artist submissions and screening, committee scoring, venue recruiting and planning, matching acts to venues, a budget with a talent target for every venue, sponsorship goals and last year's data.

Does Roadi work for a festival with several stages at one site?

Yes. Set up each stage the way the Winter Ramble sets up each venue: a main stage, a second stage, a late-night tent. Every stage gets its own row on the planning board and the schedule, its own slots and its own talent budget. The schedule will not let two sets overlap on one stage, and it warns you when two headliners would play at the same time on different stages and split the crowd. Venue logins and picks for venues are there if a partner runs one of your stages, and you can skip them if your own team runs every stage.

Can a curation committee review acts without a Roadi account?

Yes. Each reviewer gets a private link to score acts on the festival's own categories. The producer sees every score and the averages, and reviewers never have to create a login.

Do venues get their own login?

Yes, for free. A venue invited by the festival sees its own shows and the acts proposed to it, and can answer yes, maybe or no. It never sees other venues' numbers or the festival's full budget.

Can artists, venues and sponsors apply from our own website?

Yes. Applications from the festival's site arrive in Roadi sorted by type, and a good one moves into the right pipeline with one click. An existing spreadsheet of past submissions can be imported too.

Does Roadi sell tickets for the festival?

No. Roadi tracks the festival's money but never moves it. Ticket sales and capacity come in from the festival's own ticketing account, such as Ticket Tailor, so the producer sees them next to the budget.

Building a festival?

We built Roadi with the people who use it. If you produce a festival across venues or stages, a weekend or a downtown music crawl, let's talk about how Roadi can help.

Talk to us