YOU ARE HERE Each month, we’ll throw a dart at a map and write about where it lands. LOCATION: 15300 Black Farms Road, Huntersville
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Songs and Celebrations THE BROWN FAMILY of Davidson was out for a Sunday drive in 2000 when they passed a piece of pastoral property off Black Farms Road in sleepy Huntersville. It was 3.95 acres with an old barn in the middle, which the Browns assumed had been used for boat storage or repair. Over the years, as the three Brown kids grew from tykes to teenagers, the land was the family’s release valve for activities that were hard to pull off in their downtown Davidson home’s modest yard—Thanksgiving Day flag football games, family bonfires, four-wheeling in the winter snow.
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They created a baseball field there for local rec leagues, and when Julia, the youngest of the Brown children, started getting serious about volleyball, they put in a sand volleyball court. It was the site for Christmas parade float assembly, weddings, and graduation parties. “We have so many memories there,” Julia says. Her older brothers, Daniel and Miles, were students at the Cannon School in Concord in 2009 when they used the property for a music fundraiser, where bands from local schools played and ticket proceeds went to charity. The idea grew into an annual event, “Barnstock,” which even-
CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // SEPTEMBER 2021
tually expanded to five stages and bands that traveled from other Southern cities. After a two-year hiatus, last year because of COVID, Barnstock returned in July with a four-band, one-day event to benefit the local digital-inclusion nonprofit E2D. Today, the land isn’t as out-in-the-country as it was. It’s less than 6 miles from Birkdale Village, and a new Publix is going up less than a mile away on Sam Furr Road. But you can’t tell from farther down Black Farms Road, where a big sign announces the music festival and, on the Brown family land, the old boat barn has “Barnstock” painted on the roof. —Cristina Bolling
SHAW NIELSEN; CRISTINA BOLLING
The Brown family got back to the garden on this Huntersville property—and turned it into a music festival site
