Carrboro festival to rock in 12th year

With 168 performers spread around 24 different stages this Sunday, Carrboro will be filled with music. Sweet, free music.

Organized by the Carrboro Recreation and Parks Department, the Carrboro Music Festival will celebrate its 12th year on Sept. 20. Each year the festival has grown to include a large community of music and music lovers.

“The goal of the festival is to provide a wide variety of music, for free, to the community,” said Kim Andrews, festival coordinator and Carrboro Recreation and Parks supervisor.

“We’ll have some craft vendors set up near town hall as well that we haven’t had in the past, but the main focus is music.”

And organizers go out of their way to make it so. With the merriment beginning at 1 p.m. and lasting late into the evening, concert-goers are encouraged to take in more than one stage and mingle among the venues.

Artists are also not booked by the festival; artists book themselves. All 168 groups applied to perform and with an expected turnout of 8,000 to 10,000 people, the festival offers these musicians an amount of exposure many would never have otherwise.

“All of the bands apply and all the bands play for free, which is part of what makes our event so unique” Andrews said, also attributing the size of the festival to the unorthodox approach.

“It’s one of the biggest types of music festivals of its kind in the Southeast.”

Durham Americana outfit Midtown Dickens performed at the festival in 2007 and 2008 but is sitting out this year. Co-founder Catherine Edgerton recalls the charm of the festival.

“It was more of a shout-out to the Carrboro community than any kind of profit-making type of situation,” Edgerton said.

“There’s sort of a circuit of people who go from show to show that don’t necessarily know what they’re getting into, which is really good for exposing people to new music.”

Aminal, a Chapel Hill rock band that will be performing this year, is looking to take advantage of what the festival has to offer.

“I have the whole day off from work and I’m definitely going to check out what’s going on at the Station,” Aminal keyboardist Mark Reidy said.

“The whole process of applying and getting ready has taken a couple months and really built some excitement for the whole thing.”

Andrews said that while she’ll probably be behind the scenes most of the day, she’s looking forward to hearing as many bands play as she can. Edgerton echoed the sentiment.

“It was good to wander around before and after we played to hear some groups we hadn’t heard before,” Edgerton said, recalling the festival.

“The whole thing was a cool learning experience.”


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