Double Decker Festival unveils 10-band lineup for Oxford weekend

Wilco, Margo Price and The War and Treaty sit at the center of the 29th annual Double Decker Arts Festival lineup, and the busiest stretch around the Oxford Square is likely to come Friday night, when Penelope Road, The War and Treaty and Shane Smith and The Saints fill the 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. window.

For Oxford and Lafayette County readers trying to map a day around the music, Saturday opens earlier and gives families a softer landing. Annie and the Caldwells start at 11:30 a.m., turning the festival from a late-night crowd draw into an all-day downtown event that moves from gospel and soul to country, Americana and roadhouse rock.

The 10-act lineup also includes The Dip, The Heavy Heavy, Mountain Grass Unit and The Animeros, giving the weekend a wide range of sounds across the Square. Penelope Road, a five-piece band, blends Stevie Wonder and Hall & Oates-style groove with modern energy. The War and Treaty, the husband-and-wife duo of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, bring a Grammy-recognized mix of country, soul, gospel and Americana. Shane Smith and the Saints arrive with a road-tested country-folk-roadhouse-rock sound and a new album, Norther. Annie and the Caldwells, the West Point family band led by Annie Caldwell, mix gospel, soul and disco with a faith-centered live-recorded debut.

The festival runs April 24-25 on Oxford’s historic downtown Square and is free to attend. Visit Oxford says Double Decker is Oxford’s largest spring event and now draws a crowd of 65,000-plus people. The schedule matters because the festival has become one of the city’s biggest tourism and economic weekends, with downtown restaurants, hotels and sidewalks all feeling the surge when the marquee sets hit their peak slots.

That scale has only grown. The 2024 festival drew more than 100,000 people overall, including 50,300 on Saturday alone and visitors from 35 states, while the 2025 event drew 113,300 total attendees. Visit Oxford says the event began with the bed of an old pickup truck serving as the stage for music, later took its name from the red double-decker bus imported from England in 1994, and now features more than 100 art vendors and more than 20 local food vendors on Saturday, along with Friday art demonstrations and music. Since 2015, organizers have also picked a local artist each year to create the official festival artwork used on merchandise, posters and downtown banners.