Blueground Undergrass has watched the annual Sautee Jamboree grow from a small music event to a large outdoor festival.

For the fourth year now, Blueground Undergrass will headline one evening of the festival with traditional and jam band tunes.

"We were kind of the flagship band to start the festival," said band member Jeff Mosier. "It started off as a small outdoor concert and now it is grown into a two-day event with wider reaching fingers."

Blueground Undergrass is set to headline Saturday evening and will welcome special guest Col. Bruce Hampton, and on Friday night a portion of the band will perform.

"On Friday night we're gonna do just the Mosier Brothers - just me and my brother and a fiddle player," Mosier said. "So the Friday night thing will be a little bit more traditional."

Mosier, the banjo and vocalist for Blueground Undergrass, added that Hampton is his mentor and he can't wait to collaborate with him on Saturday.

"He's the guy that got me into rock 'n' roll; he's a legend," Mosier said. "He's kind of the godfather of jam band music. ... We'll do a lot of improv and get him up. We'll play ourselves into a corner and play ourselves out of it. In other words, get into a musical situation where we have to listen to get out of it."

Other members of the Atlanta-based Blueground Undergrass are guitarist and vocalist Johnny Mosier, Mark Van Allen on pedal steel and lap steel, Gainesville drummer Jack Watson and acoustic and electric bass player Andrew Altman.

Other bands set to play Friday are Bluegrass Alliance and Scott Baston & Saint Francis. Saturday will feature Sol Driven Train Kids, Soulhound, LINGO, The Shane Pruitt Band, Scott Baston & Saint Francis, The Last Waltz Ensemble and Blueground Undergrass.

Tommy Deadwyler, arts program director for the Sautee Nachoochee Community Association, said the festival is a unique music experience for the whole family.

"We generally have 500 to 600 people, so in the realm of music festivals is relatively small," Deadwyler said. "One of the great things about it is it gives the fans the opportunity to be closer to the artist and actually get to speak with the artist."

One new feature of the festival is that beer and wine will be available for the first time; food also will be available to purchase.

"We will have all kinds of food available," Deadwyler said. "... and we have free camping."