For the Sake of the Song: New Evansville music festival focuses on the songwriter’s journey
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A new music festival called For the Sake of the Song shines a light on songwriters at one of Evansville’s finest outdoor settings.
The free event at Wesselman Woods will start at 2 p.m. on Sept. 30, with main stage performances at the Odonata Pond Amphitheater and two songwriter circles near the nature center. More than a dozen musicians will perform at the festival, named after a Townes Van Zandt song.
Deonte Meriwether, director of operations at Wesselman Woods, told Inside INdiana Business the event is ideal for fans of live music and the great outdoors. “This gives them an opportunity to experience both worlds of things that they love. People love being out in nature, getting fresh air, especially in September going into the fall season,” he said.
The festival’s organizer, Zach Evans, used to manage ParksFest, a long-running music festival at Garvin Park. He told Inside INdiana Business that this year he wanted to create an event that was less about production and more about performance. “Focusing on the art of music rather than just the entertainment aspect of music, but hopefully balance both for the event,” he said.
“Everything I do is for songs and songwriters, so I liked the idea of For the Sake of the Song, to put a little weight on the idea of what a song is to people,” he added.
Setting the stage
Evans brings a lot of experience to the new music festival. The musician is the communications director at the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana. He’s also been a concert promoter in Evansville for the last six years. In 2018, Evans took over as executive director of ParksFest, an event that drew more than 30,000 people to Garvin Park.
“ParksFest had bigger bands. There were funk bands, metal bands, rappers. There was the full gamut of genres, and that included the full volume and production that goes along with bands of that size,” Evans said. “With For the Sake of the Song, the hope was to scale down in terms of size and cost and to put more emphasis on the idea of a performance.”
When Evans decided to go forward with the new music festival earlier this year, he considered staying in Garvin Park or moving to Roberts Park. However, once he revisited Wesselman Woods, the choice was made for him. “They used to have a music festival there called Music on the Hill. I went to a few of those and was always impressed by it. It felt like a really cool place to see a band. So I went back there, and I was like, yeah, this has got to be it,” he said.
Meriwether said merging music with nature has always been successful at Wesselman Woods. “Back in the 70s, there were musical events taking place here. The Hadi Shriners used to have a brass band that would play,” he said.
In 2022, the Evansville Philharmonic brought its New Traditions Diversity Series to Wesselman Woods. Meriweather said the concert drew a nice crowd at Odonata Pond. “This year, there were over 200 people out at the pond listening to the Eykamp String Quartet,” he said. “We were like, OK, I don’t know what’s going on here, but the community has spoken, and they want to see more musical events in nature.”
Songwriter circles and main stage performances
During the festival’s songwriter circles, four performers will take turns telling stories and singing songs, with the musicians singing about four or five songs each.
“One performer will talk about their song before or after they perform it—why they wrote it or how they wrote it. Or sometimes artists don’t like to lift the veil that much, so they might just describe a feeling about it or something. After that song and discussion are over, it goes to the next person, and then it rotates like that for 90 or so minutes,” Evans said.
“It’s a way for people to get a little more intimate with an audience and for the audience to get a little more intimate with an artist, to kind of see how the sausage is made but also gain a better understanding of where the songwriter is coming from,” he added.
On the main stage, The Watson Twins will be the headliners. Chandra and Leigh Watson are the daughters of Bobby Watson, the late University of Evansville basketball coach who died in the 1977 UE plane crash. The sisters grew up in Louisville and graduated from UE in 1997. “I was always a fan of theirs after they dropped an album with Jenny Lewis in 2006 and followed their career,” said Evans.
Along with the performances, festivalgoers will also enjoy food trucks, a beer garden and children’s activities. “I’m really excited to show people Wesselman Woods and the Odonata Pond Amphitheater. It’s an underserved or under-attended area, and I want people to appreciate that,” Evans said.
“The space can fit probably 300 people. It’s a huge space, and so we just want that space to be used for more things, any type of artistic performance,” added Meriwether.
‘You get so into their stories’
Across the river in Kentucky, organizers of the Sandy Lee Watkins Songwriters’ Festival know a thing or two about this type of event. The songfest, named for the late Henderson County judge/executive, began as one night of performances in 2010. This past summer, the festival showcased songwriters over four nights in downtown Henderson. Patrons paid $20 per show for four live performances, with the proceeds supporting local causes.
Shelbi Carroll, co-chair of the songfest, told Inside INdiana Business the event’s atmosphere is intimate and easy-going. “The artists are up there, and it’s like they’re playing in their basement, hanging out. It’s very casual, very relaxed, so you feel like you get a sense into their world,” she said. “You get so into their stories, they just soak you in so much that you don’t want to talk, you want to listen. It’s so captivating, it’s emotional.”
To keep the shows intimate but also grow the event, organizers chose to scale the Sandy Lee Watkins Songwriters’ Festival by extending it rather than enlarging it. “The only way to do that was to add more nights because we did not want to add bigger shows, more people, because that takes away from our initial goal from the beginning,” Carroll said.
A challenging aspect of organizing the Henderson songfest is ensuring a new experience each year. “There are some fan favorites that are always going to draw the large crowd that we’ll probably always have. But as far as the festival as a whole, I was brought in to mix things up to draw the young crowd, which is hard because we’re known to be a quiet festival,” she said.
“A lot of our newer songwriters are much more interactive. They want you clapping and screaming in the crowd. They want you singing in the crowd,” she added.
To find new performers for the Sandy Lee Watkins Songwriters Festival, Carroll relies on songwriters who’ve participated in the past. “We ask them, hey, who’s someone new that you enjoy playing with? Will you recommend one songwriter?” she said. “They work with these artists, and they have performers that aren’t on your list.”
Evans took a similar approach to finding songwriters for the Evansville festival. “Most of the people are people I’ve come across, I’ve met, I’ve known for years or had seen perform somewhere in town at some point,” he said.
A celebration of songwriting in nature
The staff at Wesselman Woods is looking forward to For the Sake of the Song and showing attendees what the nature preserve has to offer. “It gives the community an opportunity to experience Wesselman Woods in a new way, and in the long term, we hope that they will consider becoming members so that they can enjoy more events like this,” he said.
“We love the intersection of arts and science, and we try to collaborate as much as we can with people in those spaces. Music is definitely something that the community wants to see,” he added.
Evans said he’d like to see more pop-up events throughout the year that feature songwriters in Evansville, but for now, he’s focused on this first event.
“Sept. 30 is going to be a perfect day for the community to enjoy Wesselman Woods and nature and also experience some really talented musicians and hear some brilliant songs,” Evans said.
A list of performers can be found on the festival’s website, Facebook page and Instagram account.