This year marks the 15th annual MeadowGrass Music Festival, held in Black Forest over Memorial Day weekend.

The festival will feature live music, family-friendly activities, a beer tent, food trucks and more. The festival kicks off Friday afternoon.

The festival will feature 22 bands, including headliners The Steel Wheels on Friday, Blitzen Trapper on Saturday and John Craigie & Friends on Sunday. Performances will go on through the night, including special late-night shows that start at 10:30 p.m. in Inglis Hall.

Several of the bands playing the festival, including headliner Blitzen Trapper, have played MeadowGrass before. The Oregon-based psychedelic rock band played the festival 10 years ago.

“I remember it was a really cool spot, a very cool outdoor vibe. It’s been a while, it’ll be fun to be there again,” said Eric Earley, Blitzen Trapper’s vocalist and songwriter.

The band dropped a new album a week ahead of the festival, titled “100’s of 1000’s, Millions of Billions.” Earley said much of his inspiration comes from books. Earley, whose father plays the banjo, taps into a lot of genres, from folk to rock.

“A lot of the new materials draw inspiration from a lot of really old Buddhist scripture that I’m really into reading,” he said. “That was kind of where my head was for a lot of this new stuff.”

The festival will feature a wide selection of music, highlighting bluegrass but not limiting its range.

“A lot of people think that MeadowGrass is blue grass, just because it has grass in the name,” said Jessica Barney, executive director of Rocky Mountain Highway Music Collaborative, which organizes the event. “There’s been rock bands, folk, Americana, country, blues and jazz in the past.”

As far as activities, the festival will have no shortage of things to do, brews to drink and food to eat. Throughout the weekend, there will be workshops on drumming, dancing, basket weaving, yoga and puppet shows, along with the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo mobile. The beer festival on Friday night will feature eight breweries, one winery and a meadery.

One last note: If you plan on settling down to listen to the tunes, be sure to bring your picnic blankets or lawn chair.

“It’s very special for families just to be able to come out and have all that open space to pop up a campsite, which is fun, and then you can just walk over to the meadow and explore,” Barney said.