Melanie Scott Dorchester and her husband Aaron, can attest to this in an exceptional way. Aaron, who is originally from Syracuse, moved to Springfield, Va., and met Melanie there in 2000. He had started attending festivals at Sterling Stage in 1999 before bringing Melanie to her first in 2001. Since then, they have made it a tradition to attend three Sterling Stage festivals a year, bringing a troupe of friends along with them, often close to 20 people, all the way from Virginia. But it was in 2005 that the couple’s connection to the festival solidified.
In August 2005, Aaron proposed to Melanie at Sterling’s Quixotic festival (now String Fling). In May 2006, just before the Memorial Day weekend FolkFest, the two were married in the exact spot that Aaron had proposed. “It was rainy for weeks and they couldn’t mow the grass beforehand,” Melanie remembers. “The grass was 24 inches tall, but we didn’t care at all. We put up a decorated canopy, it rained, it was only 50 degrees and it was the best day ever.”
It’s moments like this that make Sterling Stage such an important, memorable and meaningful place for those who attend festivals there. For promoter and producer Eric McElveen, it makes his job even more enjoyable. Now entering his and the stage’s 17th season, McElveen has watched his brainchild grow from Memorial Day weekend parties with bands and kegs to a facility that hosts five events a year, drawing up to 1,500 people at any given festival. He’s welcomed Dickey Betts, Max Creek, the Levon Helm Band, Commander Cody, Merl Saunders and Jonathan Edwards among others as well as watched smaller bands gain acclaim after playing a Sterling festival, or become so attached to it that they return year after year.
“It’s become less dependent on the bands bringing people,” explains McElveen, who also plays bass with the Tim Herron Corporation. “The crowd has trusted me more to be a curator and pick the music that people would find fun. People aren’t saying, ‘I came for this band,’ anymore. It allows me to introduce people to new stuff and that’s really the best. From my position, I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be able to do that. I’m trying to sneak in things that are not getting exposure in the upstate New York market like alt-country, psych folk or Afrobeat.”
According to McElveen, that’s an important quality of the festival, one that informs his programming decisions. “We are able to celebrate traditions, but also be progressive about it,” he explains. “The attitude that you can’t change something musically because this is how you’re traditionally supposed to do it and you can’t mess with that form—we completely threw that out the window. I’m fascinated by these meldings of culture and what new things might be developed by putting different traditional things together.”
The result is festival lineups that expand listeners’ appreciation for all types of music. “We have a solid core of festival-goers that haven’t balked at anything I’ve thrown at them,” McElveen says. “I was a little worried at first. We’re known as this jam band place, so what will happen if I start pushing a folk or bluegrass vibe? And a lot of our regulars have been like, ‘Oh, this is great!’ They like the diversity. Most of them are just big music fans in general. They want good music. They’re not hung up on what genre it is. And then again, the community becomes more important than anything else. They think, ‘I want to go hang out with my friends and I’ve never heard a bad band there anyway, so even if I don’t know it, it’ll be fun.’”
Jam On
In the early 1990s festivals had dwindled.
After the 1980s, liability became an issue, the drinking age increased and festivals became a risk more than an opportunity to celebrate music. But McElveen, a die-hard Grateful Dead fan, had always been fascinated by the idea and influenced by festivals like Woodstock and Monterey Pop that had come before.
“I thought, ‘What a great way to present music and have this kind of temporary community where people can go beyond the boundaries of a normal concert space or club show,’” McElveen says. But as he began performing out as a musician, he was exposed to more and more problems firsthand. Clubs were only for people 21 and older, drinking and driving became a serious issue and people were combating these problems by avoiding bars and clubs and, in turn, live music.
“There was this huge segment of the population that didn’t go to live shows because there were all these restrictions,” McElveen says. “So we had this idea where we would start a place where we could have bands play and the people could stay overnight and not have to worry about other things.”
Through friends, McElveen was introduced to Tom Ryan, a fellow Deadhead who owned a 50-acre Christmas tree farm in Sterling, in northern Cayuga County. The tree business was suffering and Ryan was looking for other ways to use the land. McElveen’s idea for a festival site made sense.
“There’s nothing like it on earth,” Ryan says. “Pine trees protect you from sun and rain, there are birds everywhere, it’s in a perfect spot and I trust him {McElveen} implicitly. I’m the land guy, he’s the band guy.”
For 17 years the balance has worked.
Ryan maintains the roads and campsites and expands the festival grounds into new areas. So far 30 of the 50 acres have been developed. McElveen chooses the programming and takes care of the bands and promotion of the event. Together, their connections have helped them secure a lasting audience. “We had this giant network of people we could easily tap into to say, hey, we’re having these parties,” McElveen says.
They started having Memorial Day weekend gatherings in 1992 and held their first official festival that weekend in 1995. But after Jerry Garcia died that August, Ryan and McElveen saw things change as the jam band scene started to grow in upstate New York and throughout the country.
“A lot of people found themselves with more time on their hands,” McElveen says. “Suddenly it wasn’t just, ‘We’re going to go to a couple Grateful Dead concerts this summer.’ It was more, ‘We’re going to do our own thing and figure out how to do it.’ So the vibe was maintained, but now being exercised in different ways and that—that thread and inspiration—that’s still what we do now.”
Today, the two-stage festival hosts five events, one each month from May until September. The seventh annual Folkfest is May 26 to 29, the second annual Ameribeat is July 14 to 17, the fourth annual String Fling is
Aug. 4 to 7 and the fourth annual Last Daze of Summer is Sept. 15 to 18. A Festival of Arts will debut June 16 to 19.
Still, the path from weekend party to fivefestival summer wasn’t easy.
Long, Strange Trip
“In 2001 things got really strange for a lot of reasons,” McElveen says thoughtfully. Sterling Stage is on the border of two towns, Hannibal and Sterling, and straddles two counties, Oswego and Cayuga, and none of them had ordinances for what Sterling Stage was doing. Woodstock ’99 had been a disaster and the term “music festival” had taken on a negative connotation.
So as Sterling’s events grew, the town of Hannibal passed an ordinance to deal with the influx of people. Any event hosting more than 350 people now requires a permit, which McElveen must secure for every festival. Then, after Sept 11, 2001, and subsequent liability issues, insurance policies covering camping and music festivals suddenly became exceedingly difficult to obtain. This would carry over for the next few years.
In the midst of these and other challenges, McElveen moved to California in 2003. He cut back to producing and promoting only one festival a year for the next five years. But in taking a step back, he allowed himself to see a new perspective. “I was working in the TV and film business and met a lot of savvy, smart people who know a lot about presenting, marketing and packaging,” McElveen says. “I started to reinvent what we were doing and turn it into a viable business model to have some sustainability.”
In 2004 the name changed from Memorial Day Weekend Music Festival to the Sterling Stage Folkfest, shorter, with a more recognizable identity and easy for audiences to remember. He continued programming and promoting the event from California and by 2008 was up to three per summer, even though he was doing much of the work from across the country. He moved back East in 2009 and added the Ameribeat Festival, featuring world music from an American perspective, in 2010.
As McElveen and Ryan watched the festivals grow in popularity, both among crowds and bands, they also noticed an increase in and the formation of an “artist village.” Food and art vendors of all types, but all with a local, creative focus, came together on a grass-roots level to promote their products and become part of the festival culture. And so, the Festival of Arts was born.
The new festival will feature music, including Sterling Stage regulars, the Connecticutbased band Max Creek, movies such as The Big Lebowski, some independent shorts and animation pieces and more than 20 visual artists including painters, sculptors, mural artists, photographers, craft/jewelers and food vendors who will be selling their pieces and wares.
Scott Murawski, guitarist and vocalist of Max Creek, a band celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, is excited to participate in the new festival and spoke about past performances at Sterling. “Back in the day, it was my favorite of all,” Murawski says. “Actually, it still is. We always play for a really long time, sometimes six-hour marathons. It’s the only place other than on our own that we can do that—on a Christmas tree farm surrounded by woods, as opposed to big, open-field festivals. This is more nestled and always has really good other bands, too. There’s a cross-feeding that happens and lots of intermingling of musicians, mixing of musicians. It’s a magical, nice place with a very intimate scene. People come right up front. They wake up and they’re right there. It’s not a huge site, which is cool.”
That size and unique setup help add to the festivals’ charm. Often called a “Kampitheater,” a term Ryan started using in 1996, campsites are set up directly in front of the stage allowing festival-goers a non-stop musical experience. Unlike many open-field festivals that separate camping and music into two different locations, Sterling Stage’s setup leads to an even more communal-sharing experience. Campfires are also allowed at Sterling’s campsites, another rare quality.
“From a band perspective, that’s all really cool,” Murawski says. “There’s a light show projected onto the back wall and stage, there are always lots of enthusiastic people dancing and that’s why we play six hours at a time. The energy, the magic–time goes away. It’s a very unique place and intense experience. We experiment and play songs we’ve never done because it’s comfortable.”
Coming from a musician who works with jam band gods like Mike Gordon of Phish and Bill Kreutzmann of the Dead and has played countless venues since he joined Max Creek at age 15, Murawski’s high opinion comes with heavy weight. But he isn’t the only big act drawn in by the charm of Sterling Stage. When Levon Helm played the Sterling Stage Harvest Party, now called the Last Daze of Summer, in September 2000, McElveen went backstage and sat with him for a few minutes.
“He was like, ‘This is so incredible what you’re doing. It’s so important and it’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in decades,’” McElveen recalls. “He was so supportive and encouraging at a time when we were really struggling.
Shows were hard financially and we were facing the struggles of getting it built and defined and uncovering our vision. To have someone of his stature be so down to earth, treat me like an equal, have no ego about it and also give that encouragement—from someone who’s seen so much of the world—that was for me, amazing. He didn’t have to do that.”
That anecdote makes clear that the rewards of McElveen’s job far outweigh the challenges. Finances, politics and weather can be burdens, but he doesn’t let any of those cloud his vision. His greatest challenges are those that he places on himself. “I feel as a personal challenge that I always want to be fresh and exciting,” he says. “It’s a huge challenge.”
McElveen receives about 1,000 submissions every year from both individual bands and agencies that want a time slot at Sterling. But at any given time, he may only have six spots to fill because of returning and predetermined acts. Compounded with the job of programming according to time slots and band availability, it’s a tricky task to fill each of the festivals right.
“I also don’t want to miss something that is new and upcoming that I overlook and then hear about when it’s too late,” he says. “So I’m constantly trying to keep my ear to the ground about who’s starting to pop up in New York City or Boston or Buffalo or Syracuse and trying to measure if it’s worth it to be a part of it too.”
But at the end of the day, the most rewarding part of the job for McElveen is in the relationships and bonds he’s watched grow over time: his own and those of others. “The amount of people who come up to me and tell me they met their significant other at our festivals—I’ve lost count,” he says. “It’s really amazing. There are literally dozens of couples that have met at our festivals.”
Happy kamper: Eric McElveen (left) presides over the upcoming 17th year of concerts at Sterling Stage, lovingly nicknamed a Kampitheater.
Just like Melanie and Aaron, who will be celebrating their fifth anniversary this Memorial Day weekend at Sterling Stage. “It makes me almost teary-eyed thinking about it,” McElveen says. “You don’t ever think of that being a product of something like this, but when it happens and you know the people and you see it happen, you’re like, ‘Wow, this has really affected the community.’ It’s a very powerful thing. It’s definitely something that has been a great reward.”
McElveen encourages those interested in attending any of the festivals to order tickets in advance—historically, many of them have sold out. Tickets for the Folkfest, May 26-29 are $60 in advance and $75 at the gate. Prices for day passes have yet to be announced. Tickets are available at the Sound Garden, 310 W. Jefferson St., and Funk N’ Waffles, 727 S. Crouse Ave. Ticket information is available online at www.SterlingStage.com.
Blue heaven: A nighttime scene (above) from Sterling Stage shows
the crowd awash in blue, while the way out of the festival grounds
includes a friendly do-not-litter reminder.
The Sterling stage is the only thing i have to look forward to every year, it is the best place on earth and always will be!!!
my favorite place to camp, perform, whatever. amazing venue with amazing staff. best security team ever, amazing sound, if not the best among local festivals, and the land itself is full of magic!