Victory Turns Small-Town Roots Into Big-Stage Vision
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Max Victory (center) and members of his crew (from left) Grant Grisham (visual artist), Victory (founder), Luke Kyle (lighting designer and Jeremy Allen (senior project manager) with Victory Event Group at The Civic, where they handled lights and sound for Town and Country Garden Club’s Music Fest.
WATER VALLEY – If you were at The Town and Country Garden Club’s Music Fest at The Civic and found yourself gawking at the lights, amazed by the sound, and thinking, Okay… this is next level, you’ve already had a little taste of Victory Event Group.
At the helm is Max Victory—yes, that’s his real name—whose career began on a farm in Myrtle, Mississippi, seated on a piano bench beside his grandmother. “She was the worship leader at our church,” he recalls. “I was either backing her up on drums or sitting next to her at the piano. That’s where it started.”
That small-town start led to a very big-stage vision. But before there were jumbo video screens, celebrity bookings, and 13-foot inflatable leprechauns, there was the Watermelon Carnival. When he was young, Max’s grandparents, Wayne and Mary Victory, set up every year—his grandmother selling matching mother-daughter dresses, his grandfather crafting rustic yard décor from old barn wood and tin. “They called their business Show Your Faith,” Max says. “Everything was built around the Lord, and around creating things with love.”
Victory Event Group didn’t begin as a multi-state, multi-service production company. It started with a gift: the mayor of Tupelo and a local attorney handed Max the keys to a live music venue and told him to “have fun, don’t get us in trouble.” For seven years, he learned by doing—booking bands, running lights, figuring out logistics on the fly. “It was trial and error, but every show taught me something new,” he says.
Then came an offer he couldn’t refuse—a show at Mississippi State University. “It made me think: what if I took this on the road instead of waiting for people to come to me?” That’s exactly what he did. Today, Victory Event Group handles everything from lighting, staging, and live streaming to game shows, casino nights, worship events, and artist bookings across the country. They’ve produced events from Texas to Michigan, booked artists in California and Arizona, and are now confirming gigs in New York.
If Victory Event Group were a hotel, they’d carry your bags, valet your car, and make sure the pillows matched your personal color scheme. “Some companies just do the stage and sound and call it a day,” Max says. “We get involved in every detail. If it’s a St. Patrick’s Day parade, we’re bringing the leprechauns, the green lights, the shamrock projections. We don’t just show up—we help grow the whole vision.”
That attention to detail extends to visuals. Instead of slapping a band’s logo on a screen, his team digs into the group’s colors, mascots, and vibe, creating something unique every time. “Every detail matters,” Max insists. “We want people to feel the personality of the event from the moment they walk in.”
Ask Max what he’s proudest of, and you might expect him to name a big-ticket celebrity or a sold-out show. Instead, he talks about Carbondale, Illinois—and a floundering college tradition called the Polar Bear Festival. Once drawing thousands, the event had splintered into tiny gatherings. Max and a local DJ decided to reunite the town, securing permits, blocking streets, and getting everyone to pool resources. The result? The largest event seen in 20 years—5,000 people in year one, all in six-degree weather. “Nobody knew our potential until we all put our egos down and worked together,” Max says. “That’s my baby. I’d turn down high-paying gigs to be there.”
For someone whose company is scaling nationally, Max could have planted his headquarters anywhere. But Water Valley had his heart long before it had his business license, thanks to his childhood visits to the Watermelon Carnival with his grandparents. “There’s this nostalgia here,” he says. “Downtown feels like an episode of Andy Griffith. You go into the BTC for lunch, Turnage Drug Store with the old cash register—people remember your name. There’s a friendliness you don’t see everywhere.”
That community spirit has shaped his business values, too. “A lot of people helped me when I didn’t deserve it. I feel a duty to give back.” That’s why when the Town and Country Garden Club was working on putting together Music Fest, Max didn’t hesitate. “I was right across the street. How could I not?”
The future for Victory Event Group includes electronic music festivals at the Lake of the Ozarks, major rock acts like Stone Temple Pilots, and the only U.S. date with an internationally famous DJ D.O.D.
Through it all, Max keeps the same philosophy he’s had since that piano bench in Myrtle: create moments people will remember—not just because they saw something, but because they felt something.
“Good times. Fun moments. Creating joy,” he says. “That’s what I want people to think of when they hear Victory Event Group.”
