Here at Spinning Platters, we are REALLY excited about the second year of the Mill Valley Music Festival. We are getting the return of Northern California legends Cake, alongside SP favorites Tank & The Bangas, Adrian Belew & Jerry Harrison doing a Talking Heads set, Durand Jones, Valerie June, Black Joe Lewis, and many more. The party is NEXT WEEKEND- May 13th and 14th. Tickets and more info here. We had a chance to chat with their Executive Director, Jim Welte about this year’s event, and here’s a bit of our conversation:
I’ve just got a couple of questions to ask you about this insane endeavor you’re pulling off in one of the hardest cities in the Bay Area to get to, which prompts my first question, what made you pick Mill Valley?
Well, good question. I live here, I lived in the city for 20 years in San Francisco. Our family moved to the north bay in 2013. My background is entirely in journalism, and the business model of journalism has not been what it used to be for a while, as you probably already know. I was offered an opportunity to run the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce, which to me, was a very sharp left turn and unexpected but super fun. It allows me still to write and communicate a ton with the people who live in our town and Marin County in general. The existence of the organization is entirely focused on community and equitable vitality, all that sort of stuff. Just maintaining all of those fibers between the people who live in our town and Marin County and the Bay Area as a whole.
An event like this germinated out of the pandemic; quite frankly, it was one of those moments of, like, what can we do to try to re-enact a lot of those fissures in our town, amongst people who, previous to the pandemic, spent most of their time jumping in a car first thing in the morning. Spending it all day in the city working somewhere that company or otherwise and then coming back home and generally having their head down about what was happening within their community. We wanted to sort of seize that moment and provide an opportunity for people to think differently about where they spend their time, and a lot of them already have been doing that for the last couple of years. Avoiding those commutes, getting to work at home, and being lucky enough to do that. Our town is deeply, historically enmeshed with arts and culture, and a music festival seemed like the right fit to launch. Kind of a new way of looking at who we are as a town and that sort of thing, so we did it last year.
One day, one main stage… Very much built the plane while flying it. We were making it up as we went along, to be quite honest, but it ended up being a giant success, and it galvanized our community. Got everyone super excited about it since the day it happened; there hasn’t been a day gone by that I haven’t heard from someone who was wondering what we were when we were doing it again and what it was going to be and all that sort of thing. Yeah, here we are a year later. We’re trying to get across two days, and so far, so good.
Mill Valley is notoriously famous for musicians living in Mill Valley. What kind of response have you gotten from Weir, Hagar, and Waits and the people that live out there?
Yeah, I don’t know them personally. They’re sort of icons in their respective universes musically. You catch a glimpse here and there. Bob does pop in at the Sweetwater, which he co-owns. He does pop in all the time and invites people to join them or will hop on stage with someone that he likes or is close with him and perform with them. He, Hagar, and many others who either live in town have a place in town, whatever it might be, or are sort of our local icons. Yeah, there’s no involvement with them. But for us, we’re just trying to make the best event we can and bring in as much diverse talent as possible so we expose our frankly very white affluent Community to as many different kinds of music as possible because I think that’s a key way to grow a culture beyond what we already have, which is great. I think it’s important to expose people to different kinds of thought and kinds of music, that sort of thing.
Who does the booking of it? Is it you, or is it a collaboration?
So we partner with Noise Pop Industries, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. They do events all the time, everywhere. The woman on our team, the person on the Noise Pop team who handles a lot of my direct interaction, my cohort at the noise pop level, she and I sort of curated the event. They have a talent booking arm. We very much leaned on them with a lot of the logistics of that process of the curation and the identification of artist management agencies and that sort of thing. Yeah, I had the creative license to go after bands that I felt would be a great fit for our community, but as I said, maybe also expand the possibilities a little bit.
Is there anybody that Noise Pop brought in that you weren’t aware of that blew your mind upon listening to them that’s playing this year?
No. But they all blow my mind, and I was aware of all of them before. Once you do something once, the day after we had our event a year ago, I started making my list, and of course, that list was comically long and, in many cases, impossible. You rightsize, re-calibrate, and you find that right sweet spot. I think, in our case, it was important to find a pair of bands across two days that come with a sizable following themselves and can help you get off the ground and sell a couple of tickets. Then, for each of the four bands on the other days below those two, I think it’s critical that you give people something that might be new to them, and you give people something that they will take home.
Cake has been inactive for a little while now. Did you push them to get back to doing shows?
They go into a year planning to do a few shows, and they are in a position in their career and probably with families and whatnot that they are good at doing that. I think they had a pretty darn successful career and sort of do selective gigs here and there, and we were lucky enough to be one of them, and for us, that’s huge. If you are a fan of Cake and don’t get a chance to see them too often and an opportunity arises within a relatively short drive, I think they turn out.
I’m kind of curious if you’re willing to admit this, who’s on your fantasy list?
I can only speak personally, but I’m born and raised in Philadelphia, and I am still very much connected to my family and my community, so getting The Roots to perform in my town would be pretty unbelievable.
Yeah. It’s funny is that The Roots don’t seem impossible. They don’t play as many shows as they used to.
I would hope to grow into it someday. I hope we can grow into that. It would be fun.
Do you work with Sweetwater at all in terms of booking this?
Yeah, they’re a huge partner. First and foremost, they are another icon in our town. As a chamber, in many ways, our job is to promote the hell out of our town. I leaned heavily on my journalism background to do that. We write about new shows and new events. A ton of what we write about is what the Sweetwater is doing. They just turn out amazing content all the time. They are the sponsor of the second stage, The Sweetwater Music Hall stage, at our event. Last year, that stage was heavy on younger kids like teens and below, and it was cute and awesome. There were some good young bands. This year we’re sort of maintaining that level at that stage but raising it in terms of the caliber and age of the musicians, and Sweetwater curated that. They brought in a ton of really well-known but also some unknown bands. The Sweetwater stage is going to be fantastic, and those 30-minute windows when the band on the main stage turns over will be mostly local bands but also super-talented ones.
So, this is a no-overlap fest, then, right?
Yes! If you’re on the main stage and you take a five-minute walk to the other end of the field to see somebody from the Sweetwater stage. It’s quick and easy and will fit, and there we will be no overlap with it between each band, so you can just easily go back and forth all day long if you want.
Yeah. It’s more like the Treasure Island mindset, only a North Bay version of it.
Yes. I loved the Treasure Island Music Festival and Noise Pop did that one. That’s one of the reasons we’re excited to be working together.
Yeah. Also, North Bay has a good amount of music festivals this year. You got this, and the second year of the Blue Note Jazz Festival in Napa. I guess, The Head and the Heart curated something as well. (Down In The Valley: September 2nd & 3rd at Oxbow RiverStage) What do you think it is about the North Bay that screams, “Let’s get a music festival” because it works somehow?
As I said earlier, I do think that it’s sort of built into the roots and culture of the county of Marin, or you could even say the whole North Bay, and I think, for better or worse, it’s a little more spread out in terms of geography. Getting to a place like Oakland or elsewhere where a weekend afternoon can be pretty tough. I think, for better or worse, in the North Bay, for the most part, be a bit easier to do that, easier to navigate logistics and whatnot. Especially in our case, where we’re trying as hard as we possibly can unless you live here in our town and can walk or bike. There’s no reason for you to drive anywhere to this event. We are providing shuttles from outdoor malls north of here, that’ll be free obviously and be running all day long.
There’s an internal shuttle within Mill Valley so that if you live anywhere near the two main roads in our town, you can get in and out of the festival without driving or anything, and there are huge amounts of bike parking. We’ve just sort of set it up so that it’s easy, and therefore you’re not managing the logistics of, when are we going? How are we getting there? What are we doing? All that sort of thing. You just arrived, and you leave. This year we added ins and outs, which was a big question that most people had. We’ve sold a ton of tickets based on that of people whose kid has a baseball game or some tournament, and they want to be able to leave and come back and that sort of thing. That’s been important, but it’s also super important to me that this is a small town, and we don’t want to create Carmageddon because of this one event. More people won’t be attending this event in our town. We want to do everything we can to make sure that we’re not ruining their day.
That sounds lovely. I love a festival organizer that considers getting to and from.
Yeah. They’re our neighbors, and I’ve lived in this town long enough to know lots of people. Not only are they neighbors, I see them. If we take a wrong step or we screw something up, of course, we will hear about it, and that’s good.
Headliners are exempt from this question. You can’t answer them. Who are you most excited to see?
Valerie June. I think she is utterly incredible and someone who I think, will have an arc over many years that will be super impressive. I just think she’s crazy talented. I think Tank and the Bangas is probably the most obvious thing I could say just because they’re just absolutely sensational, and if I could get two more quick plugs into the new Durand Jones record without the Indications, is heavy and good. Then lastly, off-the-cuff idea, Orquestra Gold is an East Bay that has a Malian woman as their lead singer and just a super funky band, and I think they’ll be a hit on one of those days.
