ROCKCASTLE CO., Ky. (LEX 18) — A few miles from where the search for Joseph Couch began Saturday evening, a music festival was taking place at the Rockcastle Riverside Campgrounds. The festival was called the Rock Rebellion, and it was the first time Jamey Stringfield had organized anything like it.
“Me and four of my good friends, we decided we wanted to showcase local music,” Stringfield said. “We wanted the area to know how great the music was.”
The festival started Friday and was scheduled to last until late Saturday night.
“Everything was smooth, everything was perfect,” said Stringfield. “Just went flawlessly, until about five o’ clock Saturday evening.”
Some of the concertgoers happened to be local first responders out of Livingston. They heard news on their radios of an active shooter on Interstate 75, which is around two miles away.
“It was a little shocking that that happened in this area, and there’s quite a few people here,” said Rockcastle Riverside owner John Hamilton. “It was pretty scary for everybody.”
After hearing the news, Stringfield said, “we told the bands, ‘We totally understand if you want to leave if, you want to call it off, whatever you want to do.’ The bands stayed. After the announcement, I said, ‘well just come up here close, get close to the stage, and we’re going to play rock n roll,’ and we played until the end of the night.”
As the bands played on, two state troopers showed up and stuck around to search and secure the venue.
“At that time it was kind of good to see that law enforcement was around here,” said Hamilton. “We appreciated all that, to know we weren’t all by ourselves out here.”
Stringfield suggested that the special campground itself offered protection from harm both Friday and Saturday.
“This little slice of heaven here at Rockcastle Riverside is just amazing. It protected us. It protected everybody. It protected us from the storm Friday night, and it protected us from the active shooter also. The storm that everybody got the rain from Friday night, it was coming, everybody got scared, and it just split and went around us. Never got a drop of rain here.”
While Rock Rebellion organizers plan for a sequel next September, Hamilton is preparing for their biggest event of the year – the Moonshiner’s Ball – next month.
So far, he’s unsure what effect the shooting, as well as Joseph Couch’s uncertain whereabouts, will have on attendance.
“It’s hard to say how that’s going to go. It’s kind of early. We’re hoping any minute that they’ve caught him somewhere. Or that he surrenders.”
The Moonshiner’s Ball is scheduled for Oct. 10-13.
