By Hashtag Staff
This year, Caden Glover returns to The West Virginia State Fair Thursday, August 13, at 3 PM and 5 PM, with a new band and a musical identity that refuses to fit neatly into one genre.
For Glover, the State Fair has always been more than a place to play music. He grew up nearby, so going to the Fair was simply a part of the summer. Now, he is preparing for his fourth year as part of the official lineup.
“I can remember when I was younger watching some of the people playing music and watching the shows,” Glover said. “And now it’s pretty cool that I’m going on my fourth year playing that same stage.”
This year, however, the sound will be a little different.
Glover has spent much of his performing career either playing solo or in smaller acoustic configurations. This year, he is bringing a full band onto the stage, adding drums and a fiddler to enhance the sound his audience already knows.
“It’ll be similar, but this year we’ll have drums backing me, and we’re going to have a fiddler,” Glover said. “So, we want that same sound, except now it’s going to have a fuller sound.”
The change brings its own challenges.
“There’s definitely a cool aspect to the acoustic-style stuff where it’s just me and my guitar, and I love playing that stuff,” he said. “It’s a whole lot harder when you introduce several new members to do a full-band type of deal. But it’s worth it. I think it’s going to be really good.”
Growing his career from a young homegrown musician is part of a larger evolution Glover has navigated throughout his career. He has played for audiences of all sizes, ranging from intimate gatherings at home, to the national stage at American Idol. But, the State Fair audience is different from a traditional concert. People are moving. They are looking for food, rides, friends, and the next thing to do. Some arrive specifically to hear a performer. Others may simply happen to walk past the stage at the right moment.
For Glover, that moment of discovery is part of the job.
“Ultimately, that’s the whole goal. It is to draw a new audience in when you’re playing live at any show,” he said. “You want something that’s going to catch their ear… its like they know what it is, but also, they stop for a second and they’re like, ‘I haven’t heard it like that before.’”
That balance, bringing something familiar, but also offering something more in the process, is central to how Glover approaches a performance. His goal is not to get listeners hooked on a single song, but to make them stop and listen for what happens next.
“A new audience is always good,” he said. “But with that being said, it’s always good for people who have heard you before to come back out to support you again.”
Glover grew up in Monroe and Greenbrier counties, surrounded by the sounds and traditions of West Virginia. That background is what he believes creates a certain familiarity between him and the people who come to hear him play.
“A lot of people that go to the Fair, they more or less have somewhat of the same back history and backstory as I do, growing up in West Virginia in general,” he said. “And I think that it’s relatable.”
However, that connection is not necessarily the result of a carefully constructed musical identity. When it comes to his sound, Glover says much of what listeners hear as “country” or “bluegrass” happens naturally. While many hear a rising country star, some of the music he plays, he says, is not country at all.
“I wouldn’t personally even consider it country,” he said. “The style of music that I’m actually playing, I wouldn’t consider it country or bluegrass or anything like that. Some of it is honestly pretty far off from that.”
But then he sings.
“I’ve got an accent,” Glover said. “I just tend to sound more country. It’s not intentional. It’s just the way that it comes out.”
The same thing happens with the guitar. He grew up playing bluegrass music, and that style has naturally defined the way he plays the guitar.
“Whenever I play, I’m kind of embedded with a heavy hand on the guitar,” he said. “I grew up playing bluegrass. So whenever I play guitar and I strum, it always comes out more bluegrass-style guitar, country-style. Even if I’m not playing a country or bluegrass song, that’s how it sounds almost.”
So what is Caden Glover’s music? The answer depends on who you ask. Some people hear classic country. Others hear blues. Some hear bluegrass. Others have told him he sounds just like John Mayer. He’s cool with all of it.
“It’s kind of however you decide to listen to it,” he said. “It definitely doesn’t fit the mold of today’s mainstream country music. It’s kind of folky, kind of country, kind of bluegrass, blues. There’s some jazzy-style stuff in there. It can be all over the place.”
For a musician from West Virginia, that can create some assumptions on the national stage. Glover says audiences outside our region sometimes hear where he is from, before they hear what he is actually playing.
“You can be put into a country genre even though you’re not, just because of where you’re from, a lot of times,” he said. The label can arrive before the music has had a chance to explain itself.
When Glover returns home, something changes. No explanation is needed.
“I always like coming back to play, especially in Monroe or Greenbrier County,” he said. “It’s always kind of a refresher, because a lot of people know me back home. My cup of tea, if you will, is bluegrass stuff, because that’s what I grew up on,” he said. “A lot of people in West Virginia appreciate that type of stuff. So whenever I come back, and I do the bluegrass stuff, and whatnot, it’s more or less a refresher.”
A hometown stage is simple. The audience has a deeper connection to the music.
“If I were to play somewhere else that’s not familiar with bluegrass-style, that doesn’t have that tradition, they look at you a little sideways or really don’t understand it,” Glover said. “Whereas here, they understand.”
Sometimes the industry, or even fans in general, have a particular view of an artist, they think they can be pinned down and labeled, but for Caden Glover, that may be the most important thing to understand about his music.
He is shaped by where he comes from, but he is not limited to it.
He can sound country without making country music. He can bring the influence of bluegrass to a song that is not bluegrass. He can move between styles without choosing one as the official answer.
At the State Fair, that musical identity will arrive in a fuller form than it has before. The hometown acoustic musician will have a full band behind him. The familiar sound will be expanded, and somewhere among the people moving through the Fair, there will likely be someone who has never heard Caden Glover before.
Maybe they will stop for a song or two. Maybe they will recognize something familiar, or maybe they will hear something they cannot immediately name but leave with a deeper connection to the music.
Either way, Glover hopes they leave with the same understanding he has of his own music. “I’m not a one-trick pony,” he said. “Whether or not they like country, bluegrass, blues, whatever the case may be, I have multiple songs that they would enjoy.”
He paused, then summed it up more simply.
“I’m not pinned into one genre. I would hope that they hear something they like and understand, that there’s a lot going on here.”
“It’s not just one thing.”
Check out Caden Glover, Center Stage at the West Virginia State Fair Thursday, August 13, at 3 PM and 5 PM and visit cadenglover.com, @cadenglovermusic, caden.glover on Instagram, cadenglover on TikTok, and Caden Glover on YouTube to further support his work.
