Belladrum 2026 sees Moose Hollow return with its biggest blend yet of Highland roots music, Nashville pedigree and after-hours magic
At most festivals, stage names are just stage names. At Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, Moose Hollow feels like its own little settlement.
Tucked away behind the Garden Stage, the space that grew out of The Potting Shed and Trailer Trash stages has quietly become one of Belladrum’s most distinctive corners. Part country hoedown, part Highland session, part Americana rabbit hole, it has built a reputation for the kind of moments that usually happen after artists wander off the bigger stages and keep playing anyway.
For Rob Ellen, who has been involved with Belladrum since the start, that was always the idea.
“The idea came to me backstage on the second Grass Roots Stage year three in 2006,” he says. “It was just as much fun back there as it was out front.”
He remembers Gypsy Dave Smith jamming with Seasick Steve in one dressing room while Californian cosmic country acts traded songs with Highland musicians elsewhere backstage.
“I thought it’s a shame that folks out there can’t see this.”
That idea eventually became The Potting Shed Stage. Nearly twenty years later, it has evolved into Moose Hollow, a laid-back roots music corner that sits somewhere between a Highlands gathering, a late-night session and a deep-cut Americana festival.The 2026 line-up feels like the biggest expression of that idea yet.
This year brings genuine Nashville and Texas pedigree into the fold, with Nashville PBS presenter Mark Allen arriving alongside bassist Dave Pomeroy and gospel singer Regina McCrary as part of the Have Guitar Will Travel World Nashville Revue.
Pomeroy’s career alone stretches across decades of American music, including work with Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and Elton John, while McCrary’s history includes touring with Bob Dylan during his gospel years before becoming part of The McCrary Sisters.
There is also the return of Austin multi-instrumentalist Patterson Barrett, whose Saturday night Gram Parsons Hoot has gradually become one of Moose Hollow’s defining traditions. In typical Moose Hollow fashion, it feels less like a polished tribute set and more like musicians piling into songs together because they genuinely want to.
That atmosphere runs through the entire weekend. Texas songwriter Anna La Mare brings her Southern Gothic “folk noir” to the line-up, while travelling troubadour Dave Manning rolls back into the Highlands with gravel-and-whisky piano songs shaped by years living on the road in his 1965 VW bus Vincent.
But what keeps Moose Hollow grounded is that it never feels like an imported Americana showcase dropped into the Highlands for a weekend.Acts like The Federals, Matt Morrow, Kudos, Sid Innes, Scunnert and Isaac Sutherland are every bit as important to the identity of the space as the visiting American musicians. The appeal comes from how naturally those worlds overlap once the playing starts.
That has always been one of Belladrum’s strengths at its best. International artists and Highland musicians sharing stages, sessions and crowds without much concern for hierarchy.
The Saturday afternoon “Seasick Steve Spot” probably sums that up best. Each year Moose Hollow informally tips an artist for bigger things in the same slot Seasick Steve once played back in 2006. This year the nod goes to Mohan Evans, son of Sam Brown and grandson of Joe Brown, but already building a reputation as a songwriter in his own right.
Elsewhere across the weekend, the programme drifts comfortably through outlaw country, Americana, gospel, folk, country soul, blues and ragged bar-room rock without becoming too precious about genre labels.
Or as Gram Parsons once put it: “We don’t call it Country Music, we call it Cosmic American Music.”
That phrase hangs over Moose Hollow in 2026, not as branding, but as spirit. Because beneath the Nashville connections, the Americana references and the late-night jams, the thing that still defines Moose Hollow is the same instinct Rob Ellen described from backstage nearly twenty years ago: creating a place where musicians can collide, improvise and occasionally stumble into something memorable.
At Belladrum, that still feels worth protecting.
