Clouds and cool weather couldn’t darken the spirits at the first Wildwoodstock Music Festival — which featured 11 local bands, including Hillsdale College student band the St. Joe Trio — at Wildwood Acres Campground in Jonesville Saturday.
“On a day like today, I need you all to open up your minds, your hearts, and your souls, and feel…sunshine,” Derek Miller of the band Randomrare told a shivering audience gathered in the campground outside Jonesville.
Eleven local bands performed live from noon until around 11 p.m. Performances ranged from country to rockabilly and played all day from a stage set up on the edge of the campground.
Jake Bearinger, the festival’s organizer and lifelong employee of the family-owned campground, said Wildwood Acres has featured many musical performances over the years, but never anything of this scale.
“I think it’s amazing, and exactly what needs to be happening,” Shane Engel, who performed Saturday under the name Hooflip, said. “People were coming out and enjoying live, original music.”
All of the bands were local to Hillsdale County and neighboring counties. For many of the attendees and organizers, this meant personal connection with the performers.
“I’ve seen all of them play at sets and practices and stuff, so I know the bands,” Litchfield resident Melinda Severance said.
Severance said Wildwoodstock was the first music festival of its kind that she has seen in the area.
“Jake and I are heavily involved in the local music scene because we’re local musicians,” Adam Russell, the festival’s sound technician, said. “So that’s how we know all these guys. Plus we went to school with a lot of them.”
Bearninger said between 200 and 300 people attended the festival, and while the turnout was slightly smaller than anticipated, it was significant for the festival’s first year. Attendees watched acts from picnic tables set up on the grass and explored the campground, which included a merchandise tent, several food tents and a lake open for boating and fishing.
The weather cleared as the evening went on, and musicians and attendees enjoyed clear skies, complete with a bonfire and spontaneous off-stage music.
The festival came together at the last minute, Bearinger said, when planning began just six weeks ago. But the organizers of Wildwoodstock are already looking ahead to next year.
“If we earn enough profit today to keep it going, then yeah, Wildwoodstock will return next year,” Russell said. “And it will be even bigger, because we’ll probably have the money for signs and stuff.”
Those involved with Wildwoodstock consider music vital to a community, and hope to continue developing the music scene in the area.
“The festival scene is dying,” Russell said, “and we’re hoping to keep it alive.”
