Intro:
A new music fesitval is coming to Wesselman Woods September 30th. It’s called ‘For the Sake of the Song Music Festival,’ and it’s directed by Zach Evans, former host of Parks Fest … and former Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana community engagement coordinator. WNINs Tim Jagielo sat down with Evans and his assistant Chris Passage, to talk about what happened to Parks Fest , and about this new festival.
Timothy Jagielo
What was Parks Fest? And do you wanna talk about when you realized that you weren't going to be doing it anymore, or that you didn't want to do anymore?
Zach Evans
Yeah, Parks Fest was a music festival at Garvin park that was founded in 2014. It was a community music festival. So there's bands and a beer garden and kids activities. out on the north side of Garvin Park. I took over that Festival in 2018 with Nathan Jochum and last year I ran it as the lead director, after Nathan stepped back.
Coming into 2023, I was just kind of evaluating what I want to do with my time, and what maybe the community needs and all those things that influenced the decision.
And I decided that I didn't want to host Parks Fest again this year. And we talked to some people about maybe taking it over and it didn't pan out which this has happened in parks is history in 2017. Alex Mourer decided not to host the festival and it took a year for him to find a replacement and me and Nathan.
So in the meantime, I've really been thinking about this music festival, the songwriter-based music festival in my head for a few years now and it just felt like a really opportune time to pursue a new endeavor for me so I created For the Sake of The Song Music Festival.
TJ
And how are they going to be different if you have attended Parks Fest? What's gonna be different about this festival?
ZE
Well, location is the biggest one — Parks Fest was at Garvin Park, which is a nice historic park in a historic part of town with you know, the third oldest baseball field, baseball stadium in the country, with a nice historic bandstand.
Wesselman Woods, For the Sake of The Song Music Festival is a much more nature-centered event. We're surrounded by trees, it's very lush, there's a pond behind us — this is a nature preserve. So that's the biggest difference I say also in terms of scale, bands at Parks Fest was maybe a little louder, a little bigger, a little funkier, a little more brash, For the Sake of The Song will be more low key. Not necessarily acoustic because I don't want to box in singer/songwriter productions as strictly ‘acoustic’ songs, because we have other other styles of songwriting present at the festival, but it will be a little more low key, not as loud, a little more intimate, more intimate festival.
TJ
How is the talent procurement different between the two festivals? How are you reaching out to musicians that you'd like to see? And how are you making people aware of what they could perform at if it's still open?
ZE
I think probably and this is where Chris could really chime in. But one of the most interesting parts about this festival that wasn't present at say Parks Fest was what we're calling the ‘roundtable,’ songwriter portion of the event, which is going to have two different sets of roundtable discussions featuring four singer-songwriters sharing their songs and the stories about their songs. And coming up with who we wanted to perform at those and who was available, of course that was a thing that Chris Passage, and I really had fun, just kind of deciding what genres we want to touch on how we wanted to combine different artists and how we wanted to layer them.
Chris Passage
I think one of the biggest challenges, as far as getting talent this year was, we really have only been at this for six months. From when Zach finally went, ‘you know what, I am going to do this.’ When we hit on September 30, it will almost be exactly six months, and to do something like that, in that very short amount of time. It's not easy.
So, a lot of the artists that we reached out to were already booked, … (but) even those folks that couldn't be involved with it because they were already booked or are like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a great idea. You have my full support. And ‘if you keep doing it, let us know.’
I mean, I'm excited about everything for the festival. I'm really psyched for the roundtable. We've got your traditional singer-songwriters. But then we've got people like Cas One (Jacob Snider), who's a rapper, and who's never done anything like this, and he's probably more excited than we are. Because he gets a chance to you know, explain his writing process.
TJ
What does ‘For the Sake of the Song’ mean?
ZE
For the sake of the song for me, almost the name came before the festival, in some ways. For me, I'm a musician. I don't necessarily consider myself a ‘songwriter.’ So I'm like an accompanist; I like to serve a song, I feel like everything I do professionally is for the sake of the song.
I mean, whether it's me performing or me as a promoter, or me as a, you know, social media person and marketing person for the Arts Council previously, everything I did was for performing artists and specifically, the songs of which they perform. So ‘For the Sake of The Song' for me, it was just an idea of preserving and showcasing area, regional and hopefully some touring songwriters and giving people a really nice, tight, intimate way to experience those songs.
TJ
What's the schedule going to be like? And can you outline some activities?
ZE
So on September 30th, the gates will open at 2pm. And music will start right at 2pm. I think we'll start off with one of the roundtables as we're getting the main venue, the Odonata Pond Amphitheater ready, and that will start at 2:30. And we'll have bands on both sections of the venue. At Wesselman Woods, performing through the day, and then they'll wrap up about six and that'll start the Watson Twins, who are headlining acts here at the amphitheater on the hill.
TJ
So there's two venues — this one right behind you —
ZE
Right; the other one is right up by the nature center. When you're walking into the Preserve, there's the center and there's what they call the ‘classroom,’ they've got a nice little round section with benches, not unlike the ones we're sitting on, much smaller, much more intimate even than this. So the idea is, especially with for songwriters, just kind of talking and sharing their stories that everyone can kind of just crowd around, which is essentially like a campfire area
CP
… I didn't know this was out here; the infrastructure is perfect for something like this and so, like I keep saying, I'm really excited for this event but I'm I'm excited to be a part of it. I'm excited for everybody to come out and and enjoy it it's it's going to be something special
ZE
Maybe we should call it the ‘Songwriter Circle;’ ‘roundtable’ is confusing. … Additionally, we also have a beer garden provided by Bokeh Lounge and food trucks provided by the Evansville Food Truck Association. There'll be certain levels of kids’ activities especially centered around the playscape, which is you know, a nice feature of the nature preserve. So there's a little bit of everything going on today. Actually, we're gonna have a live mural or live art. I don't know if it's a mural live art created by Aaron Hunter. ‘Aaron Soulberry’ is his artist name. He's going to be on site creating one of his paper collage pieces, large scale from what I hear.
TJ
Has there been a festival similar to this that you've seen in Evansville? Or was this inspired by another festival?
ZE
I have seen a festival here in the 2010s. There was an event called Music on The Hill. (Gesturing) this is known as ‘the hill’ around here, at least in Wesselman Woods circles, and it was a very nice kind of international music festival of sorts. So I was inspired by the location of knowing that that was here, but this kind of songwriting festival, not exactly.
… I wanted to have the features of songwriters getting to talk about their songs and things like that, but I still want to commit to a kind of concert-quality production for the City of Evansville. I feel like that was the nice part about Parks Fest, is that we offered members of the community, concert-quality production for free. So often everything has a price tag especially now, so Parks Fest and For the Sake of The Song — completely free. We want people to be able to experience quality art. We want people to experience quality art experiences for free — no cost of admission, no barrier of entry.
… Parks fest meant a lot to a lot of people. There's a lot of great memories for me, for volunteers and other organizers, but also for attendees. It is hard to see it go for now. But hopefully it comes back one day.
CP
It’s not ‘goodbye.’ It's, ‘we'll see you soon.’
ZE
Exactly. Exactly. And you know, For the Sake of the Song isn't a Parks Fest replacement. But I hope people who enjoyed Parks Fest would come to For the Sake of The Song Music Festival and enjoy themselves.
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