Donna Zanetti, Creative Director at Country Calling Festival, talks about the process of planning a country music festival which champions the fans. My favourite moment of the whole year happens before anyone has even walked through the gates. It’s standing in the middle of the festival site with the team, looking across the field at everything we’ve spent the last year bringing to life. For twelve months it’s lived in our heads, on site plans, spreadsheets and countless WhatsApp messages. And suddenly it’s real. The stages are built, the fencing is up, the traders are in place and, in just a matter of hours, thousands of country music fans will be walking through those gates. For a few minutes it’s quiet. We just stand there, take it all in and appreciate what we’ve built before everything gets busy. Then the gates open, the music starts and the whole place comes alive. The Country Calling experience People often ask what makes Country Calling different, and the honest answer is probably much simpler than people expect; we built the festival we’d want to go to ourselves. Every meeting, every site plan, every artist conversation and every little decision comes back to one question: if we were coming to this festival as fans, would we love it? I still have to pinch myself that I get to call myself Creative Director of Country Calling, but the title only tells part of the story. We’re a small team who genuinely love country music, and everyone wears about five different hats. Over the course of a year there are countless conversations, ideas, challenges and last-minute changes, but every decision comes back to making the festival better for the fans. If it doesn’t improve the experience, it usually doesn’t make the cut. Country Calling 2026 headliners One of the biggest moments during this year’s planning was getting the call from Nashville to say Randy Houser and Parmalee were confirmed as our 2026 headliners. There may even have been a little happy dance in my office. They’re artists I’ve admired for years, so knowing they’d be headlining a festival we’d all worked so hard to build felt pretty surreal. Getting the balance of the line-up right has always mattered to me. I wanted us to bring some of the biggest names from Nashville to Essex while continuing to champion the amazing homegrown talent we have here in the UK. I genuinely believe UK artists deserve to share the stage with some of the biggest names in country music. When I started putting the line-up together, I found myself going back to my Spotify playlists again and again. One minute it’s Randy Houser, the next it’s Ashley McBryde, then Brothers Osborne, Parmalee or Kezia Gill. That’s just how I listen to country music, and I know I’m not the only one. Most of us don’t sit there thinking about sub-genres – we just listen to songs we love. At some point it clicked that that’s exactly what I wanted Country Calling to feel like: a festival where people could discover something new, sing every word to an old favourite and come away feeling like the whole weekend celebrated everything we love about country music. Celebrating female talent One thing we spoke about a lot during planning was making sure the line-up reflected where country music is today. Some of the most exciting artists around right now are women, so we wanted that reflected on our poster. Seeing we’d achieved an almost 50/50 split between male and female artists is something we’re genuinely proud of, and we’d love to keep building on that in future years. One thing we’ve always believed is that festivals should be where you discover your next favourite artist. Alongside the bigger names, we’ve taken a few chances on new and emerging international artists who we honestly think are going to be huge. One artist I’m especially excited for people to discover is Lakelin Lemmings. The first time I heard her music, I knew there was something special about her. She’s an incredible songwriter and performer, and I genuinely think she’s got a really bright future. I’d love to think that in a few years’ time people might be able to say, “I saw them at Country Calling before they became huge.” Seeing the reaction when we announced the line-up was brilliant. Watching people share the poster, plan their weekends and tell us how excited they were made every late night worthwhile. A festival built by country fans I’ve always thought great festivals are about much more than who’s on the poster. It’s discovering an artist you hadn’t heard before, bumping into friends you only seem to see at festivals, sitting on the grass between sets with a drink and simply enjoying being there. That’s the bit I love. None of us really switch off once the festival ends. We’re already making notes. What worked? What didn’t? What did people love? What can we improve? Every year we learn something, and every year we try to make the next festival even better. We’re country fans building a festival for country fans, and that’s something we’ve never lost sight of. We hope that when people arrive, they can feel the care that’s gone into every part of the weekend. From the way the site is laid out to the little details people might not notice straight away, everything has been designed with the fan experience in mind. After a year of planning, we finally get to the part we’ve all been waiting for– seeing people enjoy it. We can’t wait to welcome everyone through the gates and watch Country Calling take on a life of its own.
The post Country Calling: Built by Country Fans, Centred Around the Fan Experience appeared first on Maverick Country.
