Festival to be 'green,' groovy

Ethan Bush, mandolin player for Fayetteville bluegrass band Arkansauce, is excited to be a part of the inaugural Homegrown Music Festival happening near Ozark this week. Even though he lives in New Orleans now, he still travels a lot with the other band members, but it's usually for club dates. When the band gets to play music festivals, he says the majority of them are in the Northwest corner of their home state.

"A lot of our music tastes were kind of forged in that environment," Bush says. "I think the path we're on now kind of started because of going to shows on the mountain. We feel at home at those festivals. We love it."

So, of course, the band members didn't hesitate when they were invited to play two sets at the new Homegrown Festival. The hometown favorites will close down the main stage at 11:30 Friday and Saturday nights. Picking their instruments with their friends and floating the Mulberry River aren't the only things Bush is looking forward to about Homegrown. He says he's glad to see locals hosting a musical event that is aiming for a low impact on the environment: Homegrown will be the first sustainability-conscious festival for the area.

"Festivals always attract the kind of people who think forwardly about stuff like that anyway," Bush says. "It's really commendable on their part to take that on. It's hard to take a thousand people camping and not have all the plastic bottles and trash [left behind]. Just to take it on will open a lot of people's eyes. They can go home and think, 'Well, I can at least do my part.'"

The family-friendly Homegrown Music Festival will bring bluegrass groups from across the country to Byrd's Adventure Center north of Ozark for three nights of music, while partnering with local businesses to keep the "festival footprint" as small as possible.

"We started talking about reasons I don't go to music festivals anymore," says Hannah Withers, who was part of the festival's inception with business partner Jessica Sumner. "I have a really hard time going out to the woods at these beautiful places and seeing all the trash there. I feel like our area is full of a lot of progressive people who want to see things move in that direction [of being more sustainable], but we don't have a lot of infrastructure for that in our area."

So for nearly a year, festival organizers have been creating the infrastructure. It begins Thursday when Phat Tire Bike Shop in Fayetteville leads a bike ride from Fayetteville to Byrd's to shuttle riders' camp gear to the site to cut down on vehicle traffic. Instead of throw-away materials, each festivalgoer will get a reusable plate, utensils and pint glass, all of which volunteers will wash at dish stations during the weekend. Solar energy will power parts of the festival, and compost will be picked up every morning by a local pig farmer. And the effort that has Withers most excited is all the vendors are required to use zero single-use plastics.

"We tried to hand-pick vendors that wanted to be hands-on," she says. "That what they do fits with and meets our standards of how we want to see things done -- whether it's locally made [products] or food that is locally sourced."

It's not only the vendors, though. The workshops and artists are all doing their part to keep the environmental impact low: recyclable materials for the kids' crafts, a pop-up farmers market to reduce the need to leave the campsite for food and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality measuring the sustainability efforts.

"I think it's different from anything we've ever seen in this area," Withers adds. "The look of the festival will be different from anything we've ever held."

Some of the goals of Homegrown are unique, but it's still a festival centered on bringing people together to celebrate good music in a beautiful place. Nearly 20 bluegrass, folk and Americana bands from across the United States will take the main stage during the three nights on the Mulberry. During the day, though, festivalgoers are in for a musical treat. On the Picking Tent Stage, different band members have been paired up, given a theme and will play songs reflecting that theme with their new temporary partners.

"We have so many friends in the area who play as well, it's kind of unusual for someone to not sit in for at least a couple tunes," Bush says of jamming with other musicians. "But for it to be premeditated like this gives us the chance to plan out a whole set, giving us the opportunity to get into some new material, which is great."

"I don't think I've ever seen anything like that in our part of the country," Withers says. "Those [shows] are most interesting to me, and it's a more intimate thing. I think a lot of special things will be popping up."

Withers says interest from the community and businesses have helped get Homegrown off the ground. Also encouraging is the number of tickets that have sold out of state.

"I'm excited there are so many people coming in to such a beautiful part of Arkansas and seeing what it's like. I think this is the perfect part of the state to show off," she says.

"We grew up swimming in the Mulberry River, and it's really important to us," Bush adds. "Every time you see an old beer can floating by, it kind of hurts. So it's really important they're making this at the forefront of everyone's mind. That place is so beautiful, we need to keep it that way."

Style on 07/19/2016