We gather on a muggy afternoon behind the
Folk School Coffee Parlor in Ludlow in an out building at the edge of a small yard. It’s bigger than a shed, but not by much.
Matt “Katfish” Williams, his brother “Big Dan” Williams, Matt “Wabs” Wabnitz and Casey Campbell sit around in old grade school style chairs sipping on beers. These four — plus the absent Adam “Mule Kick Murray” O’Neil, whose comments are collected separately — are the organizing force behind the annual
Whispering Beard Folk Festival, scheduled for Aug. 25-28 at the Old Mill Campground in Friendship, Ind., a 30-minute drive from Cincinnati.
They each play different roles with the festival: Wabs runs programming, Katfish (Kat) runs camping and vending, Big Dan runs the front gate, Campbell serves as emcee and artist liaison, and Murray is in charge of the merchandise booth. Their individual tasks, however, matter less than what they’ve been able to accomplish as a group.
From its humble beginnings on Kat and Wab’s 10-acre farm off Wesselman Road on the Westside, the Whispering Beard Fest (better know as The Beard) has always been a passion project.
“At the time there were a lot of local bands that we were all really into: Frontier Folk Nebraska, The Tillers, stuff like that,” Wabs explains. “We just kind of decided there needed to be a bigger audience for them. Murray and I have worked at the
Crow’s Nest (in Price Hill) for almost 12 years now, and probably about 2006 we were kind of given the reigns on booking and such. So a lot of the bands that kind of now fit into what we’re doing we had coming through there, and we just kind of ran with it.”
The first Beard event featured eight bands on one stage, two port-o-lets and room for camping. Attendance was capped at 150.
“Then Wabs moved to a new place the next day, literally,” Kat says.
So the group found a spot in Thornhill, Ky., where the festival lived for two years. Eventually, Big Dan says, they “fell in love with Friendship.”
“Thornhill is gorgeous, but it’s just this open field,” Kat says. “You see those kinds of festivals all the time now. Friendship is nice because having the town nearby is a family-friendly asset for the festival.”
Families make up a decent percentage of The Beard’s temporary community. Little Beardos run around wearing crocheted beards, play in large groups together and seem to enjoy the festival as much as the grownups.
The festival has existed almost entirely without any real sponsorship. As it turns out, it’s not simply a circumstance of a young festival still trying to establish itself but a conscious choice.
“We’re not opposed to sponsorship as long as it’s the right fit,” Big Dan says. “Frankly, we haven’t found anyone. We don’t want to pigeonhole the festival. To me it boils down to the flyers you hand out for the festival. The most important thing on that flyer is the names of the bands, not the sponsor.”
Organizers have avoided creating special fenced-in or tented areas for sponsors, advertisers and VIPs as other music festivals tend to do. And they purposefully haven’t tried to import cell phone service or wifi, hoping their friends and supporters can tune out while attending The Beard.
They talk a great deal about what makes the palpable sense of community possible, and everyone has his own thoughts. But none of them can quite agree on what it takes to make this pop-up festival work so well each year.
“Our grassroots approach is the reason the festival self-polices itself so well,” Kat says. “Our advertising was you telling your buddy. And if your buddy is coming you’re going to make sure your buddy isn’t a jerk. You don’t want to spend all weekend with someone that’s going to be an ass.”
“You come in Thursday a stranger, and you leave Sunday with hundreds of new family members,” Murray says.
Creating their own opportunities
The Beard has opened a lot of doors for the five organizers to explore other possibilities for themselves.
Kat owns and lives above the Folk School Coffee Parlor, which has helped Ludlow build a creative community. The shop offers music lessons, hosts recording of
The Jerry Springer Podcast and employs musicians who need flexible work schedules for touring and practice.
Campbell and Wabs members of the red-hot local band
Buffalo Wabs and the Price Hill Hustle, which plays all over the region and regularly packs venues like
Arnold’s and
Southgate House Revival.
Big Dan’s connections at
CincyTicket help them put butts in seats at the festival, and he moonlights as an event promoter around town.
But it’s the intangibles that working on The Beard has provided that seem to have really shaped them.
“It kind of taught me to take chances more,” Kat says. “I’ve worked in jobs I hated for a long time. And now to wake up excited to go to my job every day … I never thought that was possible. I would never have been able to open the Folk School if I hadn’t met all of the people I’ve met and learned to just take a leap.”
Campbell wouldn’t still live in the area were it not for the festival, but now he runs the Folk School with Kat and bought a house just across the street. Originally from Alabama, he was just about to move home when he decided to throw in with the rest of the crew.
“From that first year in Friendship I just jumped in and told them, ‘Whatever I can do, I’ll do it,’” he says. “That was my ‘all in’ moment. I had been on the fringe for three years, and that was it.”
The others echo his sentiment.
“I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of special folks that I would have never had the chance to,” Wabs says.
It’s clear that The Beard has created strong bonds between the five organizers, and it seems to be as special to those who perform as it is for those that attend.
“The artists who come through here end up wanting to stick around as long as they can,” Campbell says, explaining that’s not the same with other festivals, where musicians frequently head out after performing as soon the applause starts.
They share a number of stories about musicians who play their set and decide to camp for the night, joining the audience by the bonfire or playing a round of whiffleball.
“We have bands we would never think would want to stay the night, and they do,” Big Dan says. “They get their guitar and walk around the campground all night long.”
Audience members often share a connection long after the festival ends. Big Dan tells a story about being at a concert at Coney Island and seeing two guys in Beard T-shirts bump into each other.
“It was pretty obvious they didn’t know each other,” he says, “but when they passed by each other they just kind of stopped and talked a minute about The Beard, then moved on.”
Campbell sums up their philosophy: “Let’s not just build a weekend. Let’s build a lifetime. Let’s bring people here and help rear this community into something we want to keep being a part of.”
The process has been nearly nine years in the making, but the community they’ve brought together continues to expand and grow stronger each year. Looking forward, they recognize that the 10th anniversary should be something special.
“Everyone throws birthday parties for big anniversaries for landmark years,” Big Dan says, “and we would be remiss to think that the 10th anniversary is not going to be the biggest and best yet. Year 10 could be crazy.
“But we usually don’t look ahead, because we can’t. We’re not on that path of growth — we’re just on that path of ‘Let’s not screw this up.’ We are the stewards of this festival.”
The 2016 Whispering Beard Folk Festival runs Aug. 25-28 at the
Old Mill Campground in Friendship, Ind. See the full lineup
here, and get ticket details
here.