Hey Kingsport,

Welcome back. Glad you're here.

Fun Fest just dropped the 2026 Sunset Concert Series lineup, and one of the announcements hit me in a way I wasn't expecting. This week I'm sharing the full lineup, a personal story that goes back to Christmas morning 2005, and everything worth doing around Kingsport this weekend.Let's get into it

In today's post:

The Sunset Concert Series lineup just dropped, and it's a strong one.

Three nights, July 23 through 25, at 1800 Legion Drive. General Admission tickets are $25 and go on sale at funfest.net. Prices go up after June 26.

The full schedule:

Pay particular attention to July 24.

I want to use this space for something more personal this week, because this one actually matters to me.

Christmas morning, 2005. I was ten years old. Under the tree was a gift from my Uncle Tom, who lived up in Connecticut. A red Fender Squier Stratocaster.

I had a mission almost immediately. I dug up tabs online, this was before YouTube was what it is today, guitar education was still being figured out on the early internet, and I taught myself to play "Meant to Live" by Switchfoot. The album it came off of, "The Beautiful Letdown," had released two years earlier in 2003 and had already racked up what would eventually become 160 million streams on that song alone. It peaked at number five on the Modern Rock chart. It was everywhere.

I did not know any of that. I just knew I loved the song, and I was going to learn to play it.

And I did. Sort of. I played what I thought, at the time, was a pretty solid version of that song. I was almost certainly terrible. But I never stopped chasing that rush. Music has been a thread running through my life ever since, and it started with that red guitar and that song on Christmas morning.

Fast forward to 2013. Senior year of high school, no real sense of direction and not much of a sense of purpose either. Switchfoot released "Fading West," an album that came paired with a documentary about the band chasing waves around the world and making music in the middle of it. I watched that documentary more times than I can count. I'm not being dramatic when I say it taught me more about how to live than four years of school ever did.

Something about watching a group of men fully committed to something they believed in, not performing it, actually living it, reached me in a way I needed at the time.

That's who Switchfoot is. They are husbands. Fathers. Musicians. Surfers. They have never seemed to care much about the size of the stage, because the music was always the point. That kind of integrity is rare, and it is something I've carried as a reference point for a long time.

Here's the part I really want to tell you.

I get to take my son Marshall to his first concert ever. And it happens to be Switchfoot. The band that met me on Christmas morning at ten years old with a red guitar and showed up again when I was seventeen and needed something to hold onto. He doesn't know any of that yet. But he will.

One more thing before the ticket link, and I mean it sincerely.

It's cool to be a fan of something. It's cool to care. We live in a world that treats enthusiasm like it's embarrassing, like caring too much about something makes you naive. It doesn't. The people who care are the ones who get something real out of being alive. Find your thing. Care about it out loud. Take your kids to the show.

Switchfoot plays July 24 alongside Daughtry. Tickets are $25 at funfest.net. Get them before June 26.

I'll see you there.

P.S. If anyone at Fun Fest can arrange a Meet & Greet with the band…I will forever be your biggest fan.

Murder Mystery Dinner at The Social | April 10 & 11 Crime & Dine Mysteries is back with "Who Shot the Sheriff?" — a western whodunit set in an 1870s saloon where you play detective over dinner. If you've never been to one of these, it's a genuinely great night out. Get tickets

Calling All Foodies at High Voltage | Saturday, April 11 | 5pm Three of Kingsport's best food vendors are walking through the door with one shared secret ingredient: Bays Mountain Brewing Company's Blood Orange Hefeweizen Ale. Opie's has the wood fired pizza, Baked & Loaded has the loaded potatoes and nachos, and Diggy's has the donuts. All three built around the same beer. This one is worth showing up for. Details

Friday Night Karaoke at The Sports Mill If you've got a song in you, this is your stage. Free to attend, no pressure, just a good Friday night. Details

1.57 acres beside open farmland. Nearly 2,800 square feet. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a split-level layout with a finished lower level, and an oversized 3-car detached garage that most people dream about having. Pasture views. Tennessee skies. Neighbors that moo.

It's in the Chuckey area, easy reach of the Nolichucky River, Cherokee National Forest, and historic Jonesborough. It is being sold as-is, which means there is room to make it yours.

The question is the price. Vote down below

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That's it for this week. Thanks for trusting me with your inbox. Let's tell some stories.

Talk soon,

Ryan