Good Moon Festival is coming back this fall after a year away, and Tyler Childers will headline its third night in downtown Durham, N.C., from Oct. 8-10. The three-night event will spread across four venues, with three performances anchored at Durham Performing Arts Center and a free daytime concert set for Oct. 10 at the Amphitheater at American Tobacco Campus.
The lineup also puts Sylvan Esso on top of two nights, while the daytime bill includes MJ Lenderman and Woke County Speedway. The festival will also feature Meshell Ndegeocello, aja monet and Silvana Estrada, and William Tyler’s Time Indefinite music film will make its North Carolina debut during the weekend.
Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, who launched Good Moon in 2024 with Psychic Hotline, called this edition their biggest and fullest yet, saying it brings together many of their favorite artists and that it is a joy to bring them home to Durham. The event began as a one-site gathering at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, but this year it expands into a downtown takeover with late-night programming and afterparties at the Pinhook, Bay 7 and Boom Club in partnership with NO VISA.
That expansion is the clearest sign of where Good Moon is headed. What started as a single-site festival has grown into a multi-venue run built around live music, a film screening and club sets, with artists including Rodrigo Amarante, Leenalchi, Tash LC, Tyler and fellow guitarist Yasmin Williams, Jacques Greene, Annie & the Caldwells, Circuit des Yeux, Kumo 99, Derrick Gee’s Radio Hour, GRRL x Made of Oak, Weirs, Babe Haven and Hex Files. The festival returns as Sylvan Esso also prepares for a sold-out June 15-20 residency at Los Angeles’ Sid the Cat Auditorium, underscoring how the duo is pushing Psychic Hotline beyond a standard label model and into events, releases and multimedia projects.
For Durham, the answer to what comes next is already booked: a fuller Good Moon, a bigger footprint and Tyler Childers at the center of it all.
