Photo courtesy of the Village of Clifton
Clifton Gorge Music and Arts Festival, a big event in a small town
- Published: August 17, 2025
A few miles down the road, the Village of Clifton boasts a population of just 136, according to the most recent census.
But despite its size, each summer, the small village puts on a big event, thanks to the work of a handful of Clifton locals who know the work, remember the history and keep showing up.
The Clifton Gorge Music and Arts Festival returns Friday and Saturday, Aug. 22–23, bringing two days of food, music, dancing and handmade art to the small Greene County village. Events run 4–11 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.–11 p.m. Saturday, with a full lineup of performances, demonstrations, vendors and activities for kids. Admission is free.
Now in its 13th year under its current name, the festival draws thousands of visitors each August, but is organized entirely by members of Clifton’s Village Council.
“We don’t have the luxury [of large-town resources], but we have this group of people,” Council member Paula Lazorski told the News in a recent interview. “We have these jobs that need to be done, and we do them.”
Lazorski programs music and performance, while Council Clerk Sue Chasnov handles vendor coordination and food trucks. Mayor Steve McFarland manages the beer garden, and other Council members assist where needed.
If Chasnov and Lazorski’s names sound familiar, it’s likely because they also keep the Clifton Opera House running week after week; as Council President Tony Satariano said, Council members all “wear a lot of hats,” including acting as the village’s public works crew.
“We just had a tree go down last week,” Lazorski said. “So we showed up with our cones and our chainsaws and got to work.”
The organizers said this year’s Music and Arts Festival will operate with a few logistical shifts. The Clifton Opera House and nearby historic schoolhouse, normally hubs for the festival’s water and electric access, are closed for state-funded renovations expected to last through 2026.
“The state is giving us a couple generators to use,” Chasnov said. “We don’t like to have to use generators, but we told vendors this year they probably have to.”
The renovations run parallel to ongoing efforts by the village’s Council to preserve Clifton’s historic structures, including its old fire station, which currently houses the village’s Senior Center and will, in the future, house the Clifton Preservation Society, which was revived in 2021. Funds raised by the festival go back into the event itself and into preserving these buildings.
The effort to keep Clifton’s past close is baked into the festival’s evolution. Its origins stretch back to 1970, according to Lazorski and Satariano, who grew up in Clifton. Back then, they said, Clifton resident Harold Stancliff — a Yellow Springs transplant — launched “Old Weird Harold Days.”
Stancliff owned the Clifton 72 Market and Gas Station, known colloquially as “Old Weird Harold’s 72 Market,” and the original incarnation of the festival was held outside the storefront. Stancliff, along with his parents, Harmon and Clara, were founders of the Clifton Old Timers Club, a sponsor for the festival, which Lazorski said featured a number of colorful events in early days.
“I think it was 1975 when they built the stockade, and anybody that didn’t grow a beard got ‘arrested,’” she said. “They would find the people with no beards and make them pay ‘bail,’ and the money would all go to charity.”
Harmon and Clara Stancliff, too, were a large part of the festival, cooking soup beans in large iron kettles that simmered overnight.
“People used to call [Clara] ‘Little Woman,’” Lazorski said. “She and Harmon would stand out there and they would cook beans in those kettles, and stay up all night long and stir those beans.”
“As kids growing up, as an excuse to stay up late, they would let us come and stir the beans all night,” Satariano added.
Chasnov said she moved to Clifton in the early 1990s. By that time, the name of the festival had officially shifted to Old Clifton Days, and featured still-remembered attractions like a pie tent and tractor display.
“It started out … with the old tractors and there were a lot of garage sale type things,” Chasnov said.
As the News reported in the past, by 2011 attendance at Old Clifton Days had begun to dwindle and fewer vendors signed on for the festival. In 2012, Clifton’s Village Council opted to both rename and refocus the festival.
“We had the opera house with lots of popular shows, so we decided to play that up,” then-Mayor Alex Bieri told the News in 2012. “Then we did away with the retail-type vendors that were selling cheap imports … [and] invited local vendors and artists who made their own products.”
The event was renamed the Clifton Gorge Music and Arts Festival, tying it to the nearby gorge and to the area talent the town wanted to showcase. A beer garden was added, along with a focus on original art and regional music.
Chasnov said this year, of the festival’s 65 vendors, just eight will be general retail. The rest offer handmade wares — fiber arts, woodwork, jewelry, salves, soaps and more.
“There’s a place for retailers, right?” Lazorski said. “But you don’t want the whole festival to be that, especially when you’re trying to do an arts and crafts [festival].”
As it has since 2012, this year’s festival will feature a full line-up of music acts and demonstrations from area performance troupes, as well as an ongoing area with activities for kids and a number of food vendors. Returning this year, organizers said, will be soup beans — a nod to the Stancliffs and the festival’s 50-plus-year tradition.
Keeping local traditions alive is important to the festival’s organizers, who said the Clifton Preservation Society — made up of Council members and festival organizers, wearing yet more hats — is currently working with a volunteer archivist to help digitize decades’ worth of historical photos and documents.
“Sometime when we’re gone, that knowledge will disappear,” Satariano said. “We literally grew up in this. So I guess that’s why we’re sort of bonded to the history of Clifton, and bonded to each other and bonded to this festival.”
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