T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK The new Blame My Roots festival had more than 2,000 attendees, organizers estimate, and they are anticipating a bigger crowd and a bigger lineup next year.

MORRISTOWN — The sound of country music that echoed through the hills of Belmont County has been silenced, and organizers of the Blame My Roots Music Festival are taking stock of the inaugural performance.

Blame My Roots was held last weekend at Valley View Campground to fill the gap left by the “hiatus” of Jamboree In The Hills. Now that the show is over, rented equipment and stages are being packed up and sent off while organizers look to next year.

Chris Dutton, one of the organizers, was busy Monday helping to clean up the campgrounds and did not have the exact numbers but estimated the attendance at more than 2,000, short of the 6,000 cap the campgrounds could hold.

“I’m still trying to clean up and put everything away, but here in the next day or so we’ll figure out attendance,” he said. “It was lower than we hoped or expected, but I think we exceeded expectations as far as show and production and what we were able to pull off. That’s been one of the biggest feathers in our caps.”

While in past years the long-standing JITH has brought in about 100,000 concert-goers, Dutton said he considered this a successful first year for the new event, considering the brief preparation time. He believes the event made a good impression on the performers, and that the organizers intend to continue the event next year if Jamboree In The Hills does not return.

“Even with the heat and everything we were doing, people showed up, saw the stage, saw what we were doing, started listening to music and there were just hugs and smiles and laughs going on in the concert area. You don’t know where your measuring stick is sometimes in projects, but hearing the professionals say, ‘You guys made everything run so smoothly.’… As far as hitting our mark on those things, it was actually a success.”

Dutton added that Blame My Roots was the result of four months of planning and he anticipates a full year of preparation will mean a more impressive show.

Longtime campground owners, this was the first attempt by members of the Dutton and Gentile families to hold a concert event. Dutton said the experience has taught them many valuable lessons for the future, as well as providing some insight into the challenges Jamboree In The Hills dealt with year after year.

“It was a quick learning curve. There are things we would do as far a site prep that we would do different,” he said. “You have one stab at this thing. You plan, and then you have one weekend.”

He noted the importance of planning and preparation.

“There’s a lot of competition in country music festivals,” he said, noting the difficulty of booking performers, since many could not commit to Blame My Roots if they had a prior commitment to play elsewhere.

“We would put an offer on somebody, and they’re playing and you had to get that festival to approve of him playing at your festival, because they have an investment in that artist. They don’t want their market to go see them at your festival before they buy a ticket for theirs. There’s a lot of that stuff that became more and more obvious,” he said.

He also thanked law enforcement and the community for support. While the heat wave was a concern, everyone had warning and took precautions to stay hydrated and out of the sun if possible.

This time of year has also been traditionally rowdy, as boisterous festival-goers at JITH often made poor decisions. In terms of security, Belmont County Sheriff David Lucas said he has not yet spoken with his deputies who were on duty during the event but said they worked well with Valley View Campground.

“I did not receive any calls from Blame My Roots of any serious incident,” he said. “We had a very good working relationship setting up security. … I’m not going to compare it with Jamboree because it’s two different incidents.”

“We met several times prior to Blame My Roots. … I think we had a very good operational plan,” Lucas said.

Sgt. Drew Hertlein said the Ohio State Highway Patrol reported an understandably quieter period than normal during the third weekend in July.

“Traffic was less than a normal Jamboree event, just due to the less number of tickets sold by event staff,” he said. “The volume of traffic was way down from last year. It was way easier on us.”

Lt. Maurice Waddell, St. Clairsville post commander, agreed.

“During Blame My Roots there was 14 OVI arrests,” Waddell said, adding that the same weekend last year included 27 OVI arrests. “The amount of traffic, Jamboree was obviously a lot more than Blame My Roots, but the good news is during that time we only had three crashes in that area. That’s a good thing. No one was seriously injured, and we didn’t have any other incidents.”

Waddell estimated the citations issued through the weekend at about 100, around a quarter of the usual number.

“I’d say we didn’t even get a quarter of citations for traffic violations,” he said. “With less count of traffic, there’s going to be less citations.”

Still, Waddell said overtime pay was offered as usual, and a few troopers from the Cambridge, Zanesville and Steubenville posts lent their help.

“This was the first year for this event. We weren’t sure how it was going to be. We knew it wasn’t going to be as big as Jamboree, but we just wanted to be prepared with manpower, so we started pulling from other posts,” Waddell said.