The 49th Annual Hopkins County Stew Contest will be held on Saturday, October 27th, at Buford Park in Sulphur Springs, Texas. Stew service will begin at 10:45 a.m. This year marks the largest ever number of contestants in the World Champion Stew Contest, with over 165 pots competing in four categories: Chicken, Beef, Super Stew Chicken, and Super Stew Beef. Those competing in the Super Stew Categories have earned that right by winning first place in the Chicken or Beef categories in previous years. All stew is prepared on site over open wood fires. Tickets are $6.00 each for all-you-can-eat-while-it-lasts. The Stew Contest is hosted by the Hopkins County Chamber of Commerce and sponsored generously by local businesses.
The Chamber is excited to announce that Brown & Gray will be participating in this year’s Stew Contest, with an acoustic music set from 12:00 p.m. to 12:45 p.m. on the main Stew stage. Brown & Gray is a brand-new country duo composed of Kaci Brown and Sam Gray. Their Hit Single, “Top Down”, has earned strong support from Apple music, with major placements across multiple Apple-curated playlists. The song has also received substantial support from Radio Disney Country and is currently a featured Highway Find on Sirius XM – The Highway. The Track has passed 3.5 million streams and is now firmly ensconced in the Top 75 US iTunes Country singles chart with over 250,000 downloads sold. On Spotify, where Brown & Gray have earned over 72.5k monthly listeners, “Top Down” reached #1 on the Spotify-curated, “Wild Country” playlist and was featured on the “Very Nearly Nashville” playlist.
Kaci Brown was born in Sulphur Springs and started writing music at age 11 when she signed with Barbara Orbison’s Nashville-based, Still Working Music. At 17, she released her debut album, “Instigator” on Interscope Records. She also was an opening act for the Backstreet Boys.
Hailing from the UK, Sam Gray is a profoundly talented singer-songwriter, producer and musician who has over 95 million streams on Spotify across 7 current single releases with Hardwell, Julian Perretta, DJ Katch, Tobtok, Manovski, Allie Farben, and Solano.
The Chamber is happy to welcome Sam & Kaci to the Stew Contest. Brown & Gray will be serving as celebrity judges for the Stew Contest and will then be available for meet-and-greets throughout the park. They will also have merchandise available for sale that day. Tickets are available at all local banks and the Chamber of Commerce office. The theme for this year’s stew contest is “May the Stew Be With You”. T-shirts are also available for purchase at the Chamber this week and at the event on Saturday for $10 each.
