The seventh annual festival boasts a diverse lineup of music and beer, and Grand Rapids-area fans can take advantage of a special daily bus trip to the event. See the full music schedule here.
Connecting with Crowds: Lansing’s Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers are spreading their wings and playing the Traverse City Microbrew & Music Festival. (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
For Michigan’s Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers, playing Traverse City’s Summer Microbrew and Music Festival for the first time is shaping up as more than just a great party.
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Brandi Carlile and her band. (Photo/Local Spins)
It’s an opportunity to interact with a new audience, something the soulful rock/folk band has had the chance to do frequently this summer, appearing at everything from the nationally acclaimed Electric Forest in Rothbury to last weekend’s regional Hoxeyville festival in Wellston.
“They’re all different and they all bring a different vibe, but ultimately, if people are connecting with it,” says Hertler, 25, of Lansing, “it’s going to be a fun show.”
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That’s certainly the aim of the seventh annual Microbrew and Music Festival being held Friday and Saturday at the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, a weekend celebration boasting national headliner Brandi Carlile and featuring beer, mead, wine and cider from more than 45 breweries.
The event drew nearly 4,000 people in 2013 and organizers are “shooting to try to beat that” this year, according to John Stocki, marketing director for the festival and Porterhouse Productions. Last year’s festival also raised $20,000 for the CherryT Ball Drop, local food banks, and Traverse Bay Children’s Advocacy Center and aims to do the same in 2014.
As in the past, the festival will spotlight regional and national acts covering “a lot of different genres,” Stocki said. That includes the folk, rock and world music approach of Ann Arbor’s The Ragbirds to the “genre-busting jazz, blues and roots” music of Minnesota’s Davina & The Vagabonds to the Chicago blues of Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials.
“We definitely support local artists, but we try to bring in big names, too,” said Stocki, noting reggae star Michael Franti & Spearhead headlined last year’s festival.
Michael Franti playing the 2013 festival. (Photo/John Stocki Photography)
Even the Grand Traverse Pipes & Drums will once again “run around the festival and have a good time,” Stocki said.
“We have a whole gauntlet of people coming this year. It’s a solid eclectic lineup. … We’re trying to target everyone.”
The festival also has expanded its “silent disco” offering for 2014, with a large tent closed off at both ends with dancers inside listening to music from two different DJs via wireless headphones rather than speakers. Listeners can choose which DJ they’re listening to at any given time; those without headphones hear no music which eliminates noise issues for other parts of the festival.
“We’re really ramping it up this year with back-to-back DJs and the massive tent, plus there will be a light show going on inside the tent,” Stocki said. “With the light show, it will be a whole new experience.”
The festival’s push for diversity applies to beverages, too, with nine of the brewers represented at the festival offering mead, wine or cider, which should appeal to gluten-intolerant festival-goers.
And for the first time, the Microbrew and Music Festival is bolstering its marketing efforts in southern lower Michigan by offering a “Beer Bus Tour” from Grand Rapids. The $100 daily round-trip package to the Traverse City festival includes a $90 VIP ticket. Details and bus tickets online here.
“We want to pack that bus,” said Stocki, noting there’s been strong interest in providing such a shuttle to the festival from the Grand Rapids area.
Nahko and Medicine for the People
Hertler sees the Traverse City festival as another step forward for the five-year-old Rainbow Seekers, who have grown in popularity across Michigan as an eclectic, seven-piece band with pop and R&B hues.
Boasting saxophone and string accents as it churns out its “psychedelic, post-Motown” music, the band’s live shows are hailed for their energetic, upbeat, fan-involving approach, with Hertler often garbed in rainbow-colored wings.
Although the band – Hertler, Ryan Hoger, Kevin Pritchard, Rick Hale, Mickey Soho, Aaron Stinson and Josh Holcomb – has completed its new album, it’s made arrangements with the subsidiary of a major label for distribution and is still waiting anxiously for final approval of revisions to the recording. The band plays the microbrew festival at 4:15 p.m. Saturday.
“It is nice to be embraced on the Michigan music scene,” said Hertler, who attended Central Michigan University. “It feels nice that people are connecting with our music and enjoying it. It’s awesome.”
Joe Hertler & The Rainbow Seekers, “Lonely,” July 2014
Copyright 2014, Spins on Music
