Hoard & Jones Usher in Sunshine and Soul at Old Washington Music Festival

by Dave Parsons

When the gates swung open at the Guernsey County Fairgrounds on Thursday afternoon, everything was ready. There was a preview show the previous night, a little bit of rain to make it fun, and everyone settled in for a weekend of country music.

If you are from the general vicinity of Old Washington, Ohio, you already know who Hoard & Jones are.  Roger Hoard is one of the most recognizable and respected talents on guitar in the Ohio Valley, or in the country, for that matter. He’s been a mentor to Brad Paisley, among others, including his musical partner, Dan Jones. His is a simple legacy rooted in mastery and generosity.

Dan Jones, meanwhile, offers a study in duality.  He is a board-certified family physician by day, and an on-stage dynamo by night. He played music very young, drawn into local jam sessions, which eventually placed him in Hoard’s orbit, where mentorship became partnership. He now straddles fiddle, guitar, harmonica, and mandolin, AND keeps his practice full-time.

In the Ohio Valley, you can be both healer and troubadour!!!

As I said in my article last year, it may not be a written law of the land, but it should be, that if you want to kick off a festival right, you have Hoard & Jones.  And that is just what the Old Washington Music Festival 2025 did. Their set was scheduled for 3 p.m., the first official performance of the 2025 festival, but the feels were anything but early.

In many ways, Roger Hoard and Dan Jones embody the heart of Old Washington itself: unpretentious, roots-deep, genuine. Their set was an impressive blend of songs, kicking off with the Charlie Daniels classic Drinking My Baby Goodbye.  If you need an opener or a closer at a country festival, you can’t go wrong with a Charlie Daniels song.

Southbound followed, and then Tom Petty’s You Wreck Me.  There’s no better sign of confidence than hitting a crowd favorite out of the gate. Hoard’s solos and Jones’s fiddle were bringing it. The Band’s The Weight had everyone in the crowd’s attention, and the shift into Eddie Rabbitt’s Driving My Life Away, was delicious. The pace was smooth and flowing into the classic Dock of the Bay, Breakdown, and Marshall Tucker’s Can’t You See. 

Another shift of genre led to B.B. King’s The Thrill Is Gone, before the country head for the barn brought Merle Haggard’s Working Man Blues and Ghost Riders in the Sky. Southern rock brought it to a close with Joe Walsh’s Rocky Mountain Way, Dobie Gray’s Drift Away, and remember what I said earlier.  If you need an opening or closing song, you look to Charlie Daniels’ catalog, and Hoard and Jones ended with South’s Gonna Do It Again.

Hoard & Jones exuded the feeling of musicians who truly love playing together.  With other Ohio Valley music veterans on the stage as their band, the afternoon felt like sitting in the back yard with your very talented neighbors leading the party.

Hoard & Jones are regional fixtures for a reason. They’re the kind of band that likes to straddle the fence between genres because they know their audience and what they want. Placing Hoard & Jones in the 3 p.m. slot said something about the festival and about the crowd.  I would venture a large part of the crowd had partied with Hoard about 20 miles down the road, as he fronted several different bands over several different decades, at Jamboree in the Hills. Having this band of folks kick off the festival on Thursday was a no-brainer in that these folks would not miss seeing Roger and company one more time. 

The same as it was last year, when they kicked off the Friday show.

Old Washington Music Festival needs to just go ahead and announce Hoard & Jones will kick off the show in 2026….or maybe that law will go into effect in the meantime, and make it a no-brainer for every year to come.

Setlist – Hoard & Jones – July 17, 2025

1. Drinking My Baby Goodbye
2. Southbound
3. You Wreck Me
4. The Weight
5. Driving My Life Away
6. Dock of the Bay
7. Breakdown
8. Roll Back the Rock for Me
9. Feelin’ Alright?
10. Can’t You See
11. The Thrill Is Gone
12. Working Man Blues
13. Ghost Riders in the Sky
14. Rocky Mountain Way
15. Drift Away
16. South’s Gonna Do It Again