Ridgewood Music Fest Brings Sounds For Every Ear
The Vander Ende-Onderdonk House, the oldest Dutch Colonial stone house in New York City, stands alone amongst a mostly industrial neighborhood, with its unique architecture and open grassy field that was used as farmland in the 1700s.
For the organizers of the “Out in the Streets” music festival, it was a perfect location for the event, which was started six years ago when Scot Bowman had a few of his favorite bands play-well, out in the streets of Bushwick.
Since then, the festival has grown to a crowd numbering more than 600, with national touring bands and big name sponsorships which helps to pay for all the upfront costs associated with an event of this magnitude.
The two-day Out in the Streets outdoor music and arts festival last weekend, July 26-27, featured local indie bands that are starting up or have some buzz. The goal was to make people aware of these bands and the local music scene.
Each band had their own unique style and the crowd showed their support in big ways. The styles spanned the genres from singer/songwriters to a 19-piece brass band, to beautifully melodic rock/pop/electronic pop, to punk rock.
The headliner, “A Place to Bury Strangers,” was well worth the wait as they exploded on stage with deafening volume and true rock star swagger, throwing their instruments and amps around the stage.
They created such an unpredictability that everyone- except for the people in the mosh pit that were taken over by the sheer madness of it all-was completely transfixed on what they would do next.
There were also local arts and craft vendors selling their unique creations as well as various food and drink stands from the bars and restaurants from the community.
This is a labor of love for Bowman along with Gabriel Rodriguez and David Teller, the festival promoters for the entire event. They were extremely busy working with over 200 different people this year to organize everything-as this was the biggest event yet, with over 600 people in attendance. This all came together as a community effort over the last seven years by local sponsorships, vendors, bars and restaurants.
When asked about the choice of location, Rodriguez stated, “This is an oasis in the middle of nowhere.” Friends of the promoters hosted similar music events there in the past under the name Arbitration Rock, after the actual rock on the land of the same name. Arbitration Rock is the prominent marker in the 1769 settlement of the boundary dispute between Bushwick in Kings County and Newtown in Queens County.
The Vander Ende-Onderdonk House hosted the event for the second year, and was very open to the idea from the start. Since the Vander Ende-Onderdonk House operates primarily on donations, they saw this as a way to raise money for the house as well as attracting attention for future visitors and events.
One of the main goals of the promoters was to work with the Ridgewood Market to tap into the community and attract the new generation of kids and families with the hopes of making people of all ages feel integrated and have fun in their own backyard.
Another goal was to keep the costs very low, as a two day pass was only $25, which was a real value considering that most big music festivals these days charge well over $100 per day.
Their biggest challenge was the budget for the event. As the event has grown over the last seven years, so have the costs. Finding the sponsors to assist with upfront expenses associated with the event was necessary to make it happen.
There were over 20 sponsors for this year’s event, which included local bars and restaurants and apparel company Puma. This was also Puma’s second year as a sponsor. Although the sponsors were essential, the promoters did a bulk of the work necessary to make it run smoothly.
Asked what his next project would be, Bowman said a very long nap-and, after that, he will work with the CMJ festival. Also, he’ll continue running The Sky Report (www.theskyreport.com) a Brooklyn-based music blog, which, as described, focuses on the discovery of “unique and forwardthinking new artists that it believes will shape the next wave in modern sounds-music for a future generation.”
