As we head towards yet another fine Pacific Northwest summer, there’s a massive list of festivals for music lovers to get excited about. Wildwood MusicFest is one such festival, a relative newbie to the scene, which will host an array of local and national Americana acts in a little town called Willamina. With 3 days of music, as well as a flurry of activities from a petting zoo to morning yoga, the Wildwood weekend extravaganza on July 18 is one campout festival you’ll definitely want to mark on your calendar. A preview show featuring Otis Heat, The Resolectrics and Lone Madrone will be held at Secret Society on May 30.
Oregon Music News spoke with Wildwood’s main organizer Katie Vinson. She explained how the festival basically started as a low key pot luck, with a makeshift music stage, and has since grown to become one of the most interesting and family friendly music festivals you’ll find this summer. A percentage of its profits will go back to local schools in the community to help fund music and art educational programs.
How long has Wildwood MusicFest been going on now?
This is the third year. It’s been the same group of people, along with my partner Kim Hamblin who owns the land that makes this event possible, Roshambo ArtFarm. It started as a preliminary informal community potluck and we actually got a substantial amount of people that came. We just had two pallets and screwed on a piece of plywood for a stage, it was super casual. But there was so much room that the cars barely took up the field. We decided to keep it going.
What first prompted you and your group to start a music festival?
We have a desire to promote our area. There’s a lot of natural beauty around here and lots of land. For about nine years we’ve been running a hotel and restaurant in our little town of Willamina called Wildwood Hotel and we’ve been having live music there through that time mainly with just local bands and expanding through the years to national touring bands and lots of Portland bands as well. We have hosted many incredible bands like Joe Pug, Anais Mitchell, Frank Fairfield, Charlie Parr, Shovels and Rope, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, Reverend Deadeye, Bombadil, Brown Bird and many more. We continue to bring live music to our not so big lounge 2 to 3 times a month. This was the true motivation to grow into a festival as there are way too many great bands that we were eager to bring to the area.
Where exactly is Willamina located by the way?
We are just between McMinnville and Lincoln City. It’s about seven miles from Spirit Mountain Casino.
Comparing to that first year, how much bigger do you expect this year’s festival to be?
We’ve grown just slightly every year. I’ll think we’ll be nearing one thousand. It’s growing at a comfortable rate to still have enough facilities to accommodate everybody. The goal isn’t to get huge at all. The geography of the location is in a rock quarry so it’s got three natural rock walls and it’s super comfortable for the sizes that we’re drawing. And there’s also plenty of room for camping and parking.
And the music genre is generally folk?
The music is kind of Roots and Americana, but that can really include anything. There’s blues, rock, folk… the variety is pretty great within those boundaries.
Do you have some bands that have been part of the festival since the beginning?
There’s some core group of bands that are very involved. The band that stands out in my mind that has always helped out in a huge way is Root Jack with Kris Stuart being an amazing PR man from the very first planning stages. But every year there’s bands coming from farther reaching areas.
It sounds like in addition to music there’ll also be a lot of other activities going on during the festival. Tell me about what people can expect to find out there.
We’ve always had fun things for kids to do. Being parents ourselves we know that the key to true happiness (laughs) is keeping your kids happy so you can do what you need to do. We have fun houses and a petting zoo and some additional features to make a designated kid zone. We even have a small kid’s stage for a couple of performers oriented just for the kids. We’re also gonna be adding crafts and stargazing at night during the main headliners. It’s nice so that parents can have fun and know their kids are being taken care of.
Can you tell us a little about the preview show on May 30? Have you done preview shows like this before?
This show will include three of the bands who will be playing at Wildwood at the Secret Society. That’s a first. It was actually an idea of those bands. It will be 8 dollars in advance and 10 dollars at the door. We’re giving away some tickets on our Facebook page for people that are sharing the event and stuff like that. People who attend the show will have a chance to win one of two sets of passes to the festival.
Festival and camping passes are available online now.
Watch highlights from last year’s Wildwood MusicFest here:
Click here to view the embedded video.
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