In Full Bloom: Seedstock harvests music, art, & community in Cortland
When a seed is planted, it marks the beginning of something that can flourish for years to come. Such is the case with Seedstock, the Cortland, NY festival of music and art. Now in its eighth year, it is has grown from a one-day festival into a weekend-long event, and it’s taking its name to heart.
We took a trip to the festival grounds, which has belonged to the Reed family (as in Reed’s Seeds) for over 200 years. Now, Main Street Farms has taken over much of the farming operation, and Chris Merkley – guitarist of roots-rock/Americana band Digger Jones and one of Seedstock’s founders (along with Jamie Yaman and Tyler Coakley)– has bought the Reed house, which serves as the nucleus of the festival. Chris took walked us through the sprawling farm while we talked about the festival, Cortland in general, and planting seeds.
How did this all start?
When I moved into the house, there were three friends living here: Jamie, Tyler, and Mack; I took Mack’s place. They had some friends who were talking about wanting to start a music festival, and we were like, we could do that here; we have this front lawn that’s like a natural amphitheater. It would be a cool party. It just started as: let’s do a music festival with a bunch of our friends’ bands. And people had such a good time that we decided to do it again the next year.
This used to be a sweetcorn field; we plowed that and seeded it to increase more parking. We’re going to put the camping up on the top of the hill, which is still the Reeds’ land, and they’re great about it. They’ve planted all the fields with vegetables now. Unfortunately, this year, there’s been a draught, and it’s mostly ragweed.
We’re doing all the food vending in-house; we’ve enlisted couple of friends, one who’s been helping us for a couple of years, doing a food stand. Now that we’re overnight, we want to offer a lot more. So, we brought in a friend of ours who owns a restaurant, Brix, downtown in Cortland, who’s been helping us organize a menu. All of the produce is going to come from the farm.
Allan [Gandelman, of Main Street Farms] has expanded his operation a lot, and he’s been great. He’s like, we’ll see what’s in season, and have plenty of it, and nice thing is, if we run out, we just go pick more in the field.
The name of the festival has a literal –
Thank you for completing that thought. It was originally named after the Reeds, but now we’re happy that it still has meaning in the focus of the festival. Allan ended up planting – he planted a strip of clover here; he left this open for us to do planting – so the campers will be right next to the squash and the cucumbers, and a little beyond there’s potato. So, yeah, we were thinking about… we were looking at these areas, the view back here - after you get to the back, the houses disappear - and it’s just the valleys and the hills. But then it’s just another festival with a nice landscape; this festival was built as a house party, so that’s why we thought, we’re gonna keep the festival to the house.
So people hang out in the house?
No.
What do you mean it’s a house party?
In the sense that it’s around the house.
But not in the house.
Yeah, no –
Do not go into the house.
No, we’ve been closing that more and more.
It used to be more free, because there weren’t as many people?
I mean, people didn’t really go inside, because everyone was hanging out outside, but there was a lot more traffic inside the house. These days, with over a thousand people on the lawn… with the festival, I think we’re approaching its capacity, just because we want to keep it around the house. We could go bigger, just go into a field, but then we feel like it loses a lot of the character.
Would you say that, since the festival started, that the region has changed at all?
I would say that, but I’m pretty biased. I feel, in its own way, Seedstock has played a role in generating some excitement.
And do you think that the changes in the area are reflected in the festival?
I think it’s all tied together – and I feel like I’m a part of it, intrinsically – what’s happening is the younger generation’s starting to be a bit more proactive in shaping what the city looks like and how it functions, where a more entrepreneurial spirit is taking place; people are opening up more progressive, contemporary businesses. We’ve got a new local food market on North Main Street, with a big focus on health, with natural and organic foods. With some of the new businesses on Main Street, there’s a younger spirit. Like Brew 64 – it’s in the Marketplace Mall – which is a coffee shop-café by day, beer and wine bar by night. They traveled out to the Pacific Northwest to look at coffee shops out there-
Have you ever been to coffee shops out there?
I haven’t.
Olympia Coffee Co. in Olympia, Washington serves their cold brew out of a nitro tap.
These guys have cold brew on tap.
They do?! Alright! In Cortland!
Honestly, we’re super excited about the food this year. Almost all of the food on the menu, produce and greens, is coming from here.
It seems like there’s a diverse musical lineup this year. Are there any mainstays who’ve been with the festival from the beginning, and any new acts who you are particularly excited about?
Yeah, actually – my band, Digger Jones, has been a part of it every year; the Unknown Woodsmen were actually the first band to ever play Seedstock. Tim Herron Corporation, Los Blancos – bands from Syracuse; Molly and the Badly Bent Bluegrass Boys – they’re a local band we’ve had a number of times. Mosaic Foundation – bands like that – Big Mean Sound Machine. New bands we’re excited about: Thunder Body, Sophistafunk, and The Nth Power, headlining on Saturday.
What are The Nth Power like?
They’re out of New York – it’s kind of like mixing gospel and R&B with almost a jam band or a rock band mentality. Their message is love, and they pull no punches on making that clear. They’re all about love. It’s got a spiritual side to it, but, what it is: it’s love. It’s packaged in some pretty kick-ass music.
What’s your vision for the future of the festival?
At this point, we’re approaching what we visualized Seedstock as growing into; we’re really excited about refining the experience now. Really getting sustainable practices incorporated into it – Renovus is bringing their solar-powered charging station that they bring to a lot of festivals, so that’s going to be on-site. I was actually just talking to a friend about possibly powering… let’s move up to the forest, because that’s really cool – because we try to incorporate art as much as possible, as well.
Music has been the main focus, but we’ve also incorporated community murals, and it’s been hilarious, with little kids making an absolute mess finger painting. The past few years we’ve asked particular artists to join the bands onstage to do live painting during their sets. We have what’s called the Meraki Forest – so our friends come and revamp this wooded area with natural installations – sometimes it’s found objects; last year we attached a bunch of things and it was more of a percussive piece – it’s impromptu stuff, collaboration.
We’ve got a friend who’s a metal and wood sculptor; we’ve talked to him about bringing his pieces up to spread around the grounds. So, with all of these things: we’re still going to expand, but we want to expand the experience. As far as the size is concerned, it’s starting to reach its capacity, in order to maintain the feel of the experience. But what we can do as organizers is continuously try to improve what that experience is. The food experience, the art, the music… I love the idea – I start to daydream a little bit – about the bands that we might potentially have play on our front lawn, which is exciting.
There’s only so much you can reinvent what a music festival is, but it’s pretty open-ended, so I think we’re all excited about that, because we’ve got enough years under our belt where we almost kind of know what we’re doing now.
Seedstock VIII: A Festival of Music and Art will go down on Friday, August 12th, through Sunday, August 14th. Three days, 20+ bands, two nights of camping, lots of delicious food, a beautiful view of rolling hills, and a late-night silent disco in the forest! For tickets and more information, visit seedstockfest.com. And for more on the awesome Main Street Farms, check out mainstreetfarms.com