Fall Flannel Folk Festival to showcase singer-songwriters as part of ‘Giving Tuesday’

The Tuesday benefit for WGVU at SpeakEZ Lounge will feature performances by half-dozen solo artists, including Michael Riley, who was featured on this week’s Local Spins on WYCE. Get the lowdown and listen to the full radio podcast featuring new local and regional music and an in-studio performance by Billy Strings and his band.

 

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It’s tough to imagine anything more fall-appropriate than a bunch of flannel-wearing musicians putting on a folk concert.

That’s exactly what’s in store at SpeakEZ Lounge Tuesday evening with the return of the Fall Flannel Folk Festival. The listening-room style event will kick off at 5:30 p.m. with several performances each by Kyle Rasche, Benjamin Riley, Michael Riley, Josh Rose, Olivia Rivera and Lucas Wilson.

This year’s festival is organized in collaboration with WGVU Public Media to celebrate Giving Tuesday, a fast-growing movement in the United States to encourage philanthropy and giving during the holiday season.

The festival is open to the public with a $10 suggested donation to WGVU, and will be streamed live at WGVU’s “Giving Tuesday” website. Attendees are encouraged to wear flannel.

Fall Flannel Folk Festival was first organized by brothers Michael and Benjamin Riley and a few singer-songwriter friends in 2014 as a way to get some of the Grand Rapids folk community together for a night of intimate performances at Rocky’s Bar & Grill. The festival continued at Rocky’s in 2015.

Michael Riley called it a “listening-room, singer-in-the-round” event.

“We’re going to set up like three guys on stage and each person is going to play a song and its going to go down the line and we’re going to rotate in and out,” said Riley, who also was an in-studio guest for this week’s edition of Local Spins on WYCE. (Check out the video, podcast below.)

“If you’re looking for an event where you can actually see a lot of different people play and don’t have time to hang out for very long, you can probably show up for a half-hour or an hour and see three or four people. You get a chance to see a lot of different musicians play a lot of different music all in kind of a fast-paced situation.”

VIDEO: Michael Riley, “To Be Free” (Local Spins on WYCE)

After a break in 2016, the opportunity arose to partner with WGVU for “Giving Tuesday” in 2017. As both an organizer and performer, Benjamin Riley thought SpeakEZ Lounge would be a better fit for the “listening-room” atmosphere of the festival.

“It’s a mindset. It’s more intimate, and requires a bit more from the audience. When you’re in that kind of intimate space, the quality of the song really gets to come through the way most of us wrote them,” he said.

Riley added the “slow decay of fall” makes concerts like these more warm and introspective.

There are no plans to adhere to a strict schedule. Artists are set to take turns performing several short sets throughout the night, and Riley anticipates a few collaborations along the way.

The festival will also serve as a sort of reunion for Riley and the artists he’ll share the stage with.

“It’s a good opportunity to see a bunch of friends I truly care about,” Riley said. “For me, it’s as much about the listening as it is the playing,” he said.

More information on Fall Flannel Folk Fest and Giving Tuesday, as well as the livestreamed event at starting at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 28 are available online here.

This week’s extended episode of Local Spins on WYCE also featured an in-studio appearance by Billy Strings and his band (prior to playing a big show Friday night at The Intersection in Grand Rapids), as well as the WYCE on-air debut of music from The Legal Immigrants, Cassidy Bisher, Dacia Bridges, Elroy Meltzer and Cold Mountain Child, plus music from Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys, Drew Nelson and Jake Kershaw.

PODCAST: Local Spins on WYCE (11/24/17)

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