Before Starvy Creek ever became a familiar name in the bluegrass world, it was just a piece of land. Pasture. Timber. A place shaped by seasons and work, where progress came slowly and nothing happened without effort.
For Don Day, it was home.
He spent his entire life on the same Conway-area farm where he was raised. Born in a doctor’s clinic in Niangua, the youngest of nine children, Don grew up learning responsibility the way farm kids do, because the work had to get done. When his older siblings moved away and his parents later relocated to Marshfield, Don bought the family farm and stayed. The address changed over the years, but the piece of ground he worked never really did.
Farming was never a side job for him. It shaped how he lived, how he worked, and what he expected of himself and others. Those closest to him say the values people later came to associate with Starvy Creek were already firmly in place long before a stage was ever built.
“He always wanted to live by Biblical understanding,” his daughter, Kathy Lane, remembered. “Forgiveness, respect, honesty, and hard work. That’s what he believed in, and that’s what he passed down.”
Those weren’t ideas he talked about lightly. They showed up every day in how he lived his life.
In his younger years, Don was described as intense, shaped by responsibility and the reality that farm work does not wait. Lane said that over time, that intensity softened, not because his standards disappeared, but because his affection grew easier to see.
“In his later years, he was the biggest teddy bear,” she said. “He told us that he loved us all the time. He wanted us to know how much he loved us.”
Bluegrass music had been part of Don’s life long before Starvy Creek existed. As a teenager, he traveled to Marshfield to see Bill Monroe perform, an experience that stayed with him. He came from a musical family, played guitar, sang, and spent countless hours listening.
His nephew, Justin [David] Bertoldie, remembers that listening more than anything.
“He loved to play, but he was really a listener,” Bertoldie said. “He could sit back and just take it all in. He cared about the music, but he cared just as much about the people around it.”
The idea of starting a festival surfaced gradually through family conversations. Bertoldie recalled that Don and his father talked about it often. They had the land. They loved the music. Eventually, Don decided it was time to try.
In the mid-1980s, he began clearing timber himself. Thick woods gave way to open ground. Lane remembers bringing him tea while he worked. Bertoldie remembers cutting trees and helping clear space for what they imagined would be a small amphitheater.
“He talked about starting a bluegrass show for a while leading up to it. We knew he would do it… But we didn’t know what it would become,” Bertoldie said.
“We just knew it was something Uncle Don believed in, and once he believed in something, he was all in.”
Starvy Creek officially began its operation in 1986.
Don didn’t start the festival to make money. In fact, it lost money for several years. He built it because he believed bluegrass deserved a place rooted in respect, and because he wanted families to have somewhere local where they could enjoy music without worrying about the environment around them.
From the beginning, he was firm about what Starvy Creek would be.
There would be no alcohol. No drugs. No behavior that threatened the atmosphere he was trying to create. Bluegrass would remain bluegrass. Drums weren’t part of that vision. The rules were posted clearly at the entrance, and they were enforced.
“If people didn’t want to follow that vision, he was polite,” Lane said. “But the answer was still no.”
Bertoldie said those boundaries were never about control, they were about perserving the family values of Starvy Creek.
“He wasn’t trying to tell people how to live,” he explained. “He was protecting the space. He believed if you set the standard, people would rise to it.”
People did rise to his standards. And Starvy Creek continued to grow.
The festival gained momentum during its third year when Doyle Lawson performed. From there, national acts followed.
Families returned year after year and Don put every dollar that was ever made back into the grounds.
When campers filled available electric hookups, he added more. When something didn’t work, he fixed it.
Underground water lines were installed. Permanent bathrooms replaced portable ones. A cook shack became a central gathering place.
By the time the Day family stepped back, the grounds included more than 400 electric and water hookups.
“If something was loose or broken, he wanted it fixed immediately,” Lane said. “He didn’t put things off. If campers saw a full lot one year, or we had a camper without electricity, he made sure that there were more spots available by the time the next festival rolled around. He was proud of that.”
Starvy Creek was never run like a business operation in the traditional sense. It functioned more like the farm he’d worked all of his life.
Don and his wife, Bobbie, worked alongside their children, grandchildren, extended family, and friends. Over time, volunteers began arriving weeks early just to help prepare. Bluegrass fans took pride in the place because Don treated them with respect.
Bobbie Day’s contribution became a tradition of its own. Each year, she and her friend Marlyn Alexander baked roughly 500 frozen fruit pies.
“Dad would joke when people said the pies were the real reason they came,” Lane said.
Musicians noticed the difference, too.
Aaron McDaris remembers Starvy Creek as a foundational place in his life. His father had done tractor work on Don’s farm years before the festival existed. Later, as a young banjo player, Don noticed him.
“He didn’t just book bands,” McDaris said. “He invested in people. He watched you, he listened to you, and when he believed in you, you felt it.”
McDaris said Don’s encouragement carried weight.
“He introduced me to people,” he said. “He paid attention. And if Don respected you, others did too.”
Nearly every band McDaris played with eventually appeared at Starvy Creek.
“Everybody in bluegrass knew who Don was,” he said. “If he shook your hand, it meant something. You knew where you stood with him.”
That reputation reached far beyond Missouri. Families planned vacations around the festival. Campers traveled from across the country. At the final festival under the Day family, 18 states were represented. Starvy Creek became an annual visit for people across the United States, and its reach stretched even farther, drawing international visitors to Conway, Missouri, to share in a family-friendly bluegrass tradition.
By 2022, Don’s health began limiting what he could physically do. Heart surgery. A pacemaker. Serious foot infections that kept him off his feet for months. During the September festival that year, he could only ride through the grounds in a golf cart.
“He hated not being able to work,” Bertoldie said. “But he loved seeing the tradition he loved so much still bringing joy to the families in this area.”
With Don’s health slowing him down, the family knew it was time. After that festival, they announced Starvy Creek would end.
“I wrote the post for the announcement and just sat there for a while,” Lane said. “I couldn’t hit the button.”
That same night the news hit Facebook, McDaris reached out.
He spoke with Don the next day, thanked him for what the festival had meant, and asked if the family had ever considered letting someone else continue it.
Don told him they had talked about it.
“Honestly, your name came up,” he said.
The meeting took place at the cook shack on the festival grounds. McDaris told the family he had no interest in changing what Don built.
“I just want to keep it the way it is,” he said. “All of the values that are associated with Starvy Creek stem from how Don lived his life, and we will continue to honor him each year as we continue the festival.”
For two years, the festival was leased. In 2024, McDaris purchased Starvy Creek.
“My dad would not have chosen anyone else,” Lane said.
Bertoldie agreed.
“He wanted someone who understood it wasn’t just land,” he said. “It was his life. And he knew Aaron would honor the roots of the festival – bluegrass music and family values.”
Don Day passed away Feb. 20, 2026. Those who knew him say his faith wasn’t something he spoke about constantly.
It showed up in how he lived, in the rules he set, and in the way he treated people.
Starvy Creek was never just a festival. It was a reflection of a man who believed work mattered, character mattered, and standards were worth keeping. That legacy was built with the help of his wife, children and their spouses.
The land still holds his labor. The stage still carries his expectations. Families still return twice a year. Music still fills the same ground where his life began.
That legacy will remain.
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