Hubby Jenkins performs during the Sisters Folk Festival on Saturday.

After a few years marred by wildfire smoke and the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s nice to have the Sisters Folk Festival back to its usual self.

I don’t mean to slight any other music-focused event in the region, but I have long maintained that Sisters Folk is the finest experience Central Oregon’s music scene has to offer — which is saying something.

There isn’t just one reason why, either. It’s the combination of the programming — an open-minded selection of artists who play folk, Americana, blues, bluegrass, rock music and beyond — and the general vibe of the festival, which is as easygoing and easily accessible as the town it calls home. This year, there were seven stages scattered across an area approximately four blocks by four blocks, with, at least in my experience, minimal waiting to get into venues. With food options around every turn, a kids’ zone in one park and artists’ merch centralized in another, the festival remains an intuitive and intoxicating experience, as long as you’re not allergic to the style of music offered.

Which is why it’s hard for me to nail down exactly why I enjoyed my time at this year’s festival so much. First, let’s recap the musical highlights:

Caroline Spence is a treasure. At The Belfry, the Nashville singer-songwriter charmed the full house with stories about her enneagram score, her impending marriage, her green thumb and her mental health struggles. (She described one number as “the feel-bad hit of the summer.”) And then there were her songs: endlessly tuneful, effortlessly charming and slightly more twangy than the recorded versions on her wonderful new album, “True North.” Her electric guitarist and her bassist/backing vocalist both contributed mightily to her sound, bringing texture and depth to perfect-enough songs like the gorgeous “Scale These Walls.”

Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno make beautiful music together. Playing in the sun-splashed space alongside Sisters Saloon, the young duo — Leva on guitar, Calcagno on guitar and fiddle — skirted along the borders between bluegrass, old-time music and modern folk, drawing lots of melody out of their minimal set-up. The ease with which they blended their voices and instruments reminded me of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings — a high compliment.

Abby Hamilton has a bright future. The Kentucky singer-songwriter’s set at the Sisters Depot rocked more than I expected, thanks to her full backing band, including an impressive electric guitarist. Hamilton played songs about driving and changing, kissing boys and writing songs, self-worth and trailer park queens, each of them sporting the kind of hooky chorus that could serve her well in Nashville. She was really good, and she’ll only get better. When she does, watch out world.

The Po ‘Ramblin Boys were my favorites of the festival. That was true going into the weekend, and they did nothing to change my mind Saturday night at the Village Green stage, where the Tennessee bluegrass band tore through a bunch of crowd-pleasing jams, pickin’ at lightning speed, hamming it up along the way and making it look like it’s easy to do both at the same time. There’s a reason this quintet is getting nominated for Grammy awards, I suppose. The highlight of the set — besides the high-octane hillbilly music that transported me back home to Kentucky — was watching guitarist Josh Rinkel (yet another Kentuckian) change a guitar string while singing lead on a song, and finishing in time to rejoin his bandmates before the song’s end. That put a big smile on every face I could see.

I ended my night bouncing around town, watching a few minutes of Le Vent Du Nord’s francophone festivities, Rainbow Girls’ heavenly harmonies and Telmary y HabanaSana’s Afro-Cuban hip-hop dance party, but also catching up with old friends, stopping for some outstanding pizza from the Boone Dog truck at The Barn, running into someone I haven’t seen in 15 years and generally soaking in the convivial spirit of Sisters after dark during folk fest weekend. Once again, I left town wondering: Is it the music that makes this event great? Or is it all the small-town stuff that happens in between? At Sisters Folk Festival, you don’t have to choose.