Carrboro Music Festival bigger and greener
Staff photo by Lyndal Wilson
By Lyndal Wilson
Carrboro Commons Staff Writer
The annual Carrboro Music Festival is back this month for its 11th year of fun and entertainment.
This free event will be held on Sunday, Sept. 28, and feature over 160 diverse artists, performing in a variety of venues throughout the town. The festival will showcase everything from rock, country, classical, to electronic styles of music.
Carrboro Music Festival Coordinator Gerry Williams said there are about 10 to 15 new performers this year, with one particularly unique electronic duo playing at The Open Eye Café.
Alex Kotch and Ben Crawford will be performing experimental electronic dance music, and incorporating things from peoples’ cell phones into their music, Williams said.
“The audience can call them or contact them on their computer and they can incorporate it into their music,” he said. “It’s really interactive…and pretty unusual, and we haven’t had that before.”
There are also a few different venues this year that have allowed the festival to increase the number of performers. The Station and Southern Rail, on East Main Street, are involved this year. They’ll have a large stage out in the middle of the parking lot, with music inside The Station, and Southern Rail’s back beer garden will be open as well.
Williams said the biggest challenge is scheduling the 160-170 performing artists. The festival has the potential to be much better, but Carrboro only has so many venues in which to do it, he said.
“All these businesses keep emailing me saying, ‘I want to be involved this year,’ but if we keep adding them we’d have 50 venues around town.” If the festival gets too big, he said, it also risks losing that intimate, close-knit community feel.
“People are familiar with it, and in a way, you would hate to see it get too much bigger because that would take away from what the festival is all about, which is bringing everyone together to enjoy music,” Williams said.
Kim Andrews, recreation supervisor from the Carrboro Recreation and Parks Department, said trash could also be a problem if the music festival became too big. She said it is an amazingly clean event and they want to keep it that way. “We are trying to be as trash-free as possible,” she said. “It’s a challenge to educate people about the trash-sorting stations…and make sure they dispose of things properly.”
Being green is a big focus this year; something the organizers have really tried to achieve, Andrews said. “We’re getting the food vendors involved… requiring them to use paper products, no plastic forks and Styrofoam cups. (We’re) trying to really sell that, and get them on board.”
Volunteers will also help people with their recycling and composting, because doing it commercially is different from doing it as home, she said. Other volunteers will do trash duty and recycling duty, which is testament to how the locals feel about their town. “We’re in a lucky community where people are pretty educated about what to recycle and are very conscious of it,” Andrews said. “We did try and go even further in that direction.”
There will also be a biodiesel bus taking people to and from the park-and-ride lot behind Carrboro Plaza. “We will be using the greenway transit authority out of Durham, and they’re all biodiesel vehicles so we’re trying to go that route, and go as green as possible,” Andrews said.
The bus will be running all day from 12 to 8 p.m., so folks can park down at Carrboro plaza. There will also be some pedi cabs running from 1 to 6 p.m.
However folks make it downtown, they will find a variety of music with stages all up and down Weaver and Main Streets. Williams said that he would like there to be even more musical variety, but is happy with the current arrangements and said it is an event for everyone.
Karen Lewis, a Carrboro resident who attends the festival every year, said she enjoys hearing lots of different bands and styles of music. “I have a very broad range of musical taste, so I’m really looking forward to hearing the variety of music,” she said.
“It touches all age groups,” Williams said. He has met musicians who have played and told him how fun it was to have a 15-year-old granddaughter and her 70-year-old grandma come up afterwards and buy a CD. “That’s the kind of cross-section you get here too,” he said. “You see lots of families around with young kids, there’s obviously a lot of high school students, college students, old Carrboro hippies. We’re all out there.”
18-year-old Brittany Morrison, a sophomore at UNC and Carrboro resident, said she had a lot of fun at last year’s festival and plans to attend again this year. “I had a blast, the bands were really good,” she said. “It seems to me they have different bands every year, so I’m curious to see what’s new.”
For children, The Town Commons, beside Town Hall, will be open again with a 25-foot high slide, a 55-foot caterpillar kids can crawl through, and the scrap exchange for making arts and crafts with recycled material. Live music for the parents will be playing there also.
Williams and Andrews said the event offers so much because it receives so much as well. The festival receives a lot of support from volunteers, and people who love being a part of the event and getting involved. Andrews said they have a lot of help from volunteers, plus a volunteer committee as well as from the Recreation and Parks Department, and the police. “It’s really nice to have that kind of support,” Andrews said. “The whole town really chips in, and it wouldn’t happen without their contributions.”
Williams didn’t appear to have lost any enthusiasm after all the years of planning and organizing, and said he would keep coordinating until asked to quit. “I am just really proud of the event,” he said. “I love doing this. I really have fun planning it, fun doing the event.”
“I think the whole community really loves it, and it’s a great event,” Williams said. For more information on the Carrboro Music Festival, visit the Web site: carrboromusicfestival.com
The above author is an exchange student from Australia who has fallen in love with Carrboro. Imagine that.