Dunegrass grows tall once again: Donna the Buffalo on tap
Local television personality Vic McCarty reports on The Ticker that the Dunegrass Festival is growing big once again — just three years after the popular Empire music festival outgrew its training wheels and all but careened off a cliff under the misdirection of Stephen Volas. Since then, Ryan Lake has downsized the August folk festival, which will enjoy its third consecutive year at the Empire Eagles field on M-72 east of Empire. But the creation of the late Mike Vanderberg appears to be rising again. Donna the Buffalo will headline the Aug. 5-7 festival.
McCarty, by the way, is working on a documentary about the Dunegrass Festival. Here’s his story:
Dunegrass: Big Lineup, Big Move
By Vic McCarty
Dunegrass lives! Left for dead little more than two years ago when the multi-day music festival nearly collapsed under its massive size and troubled finances, Dunegrass is set to rock northern Michigan once again – and maybe better than ever.
The festival has announced its biggest lineup in years – 42 confirmed acts, with tickets sales 30 percent ahead of last year’s pace. Headlining: Donna the Buffalo, the two-decade chart-topping Americana band behind the famed Finger Lakes Grass Roots Festival in Trumansburg, NY.
“I think last year we reestablished ourselves,” says promoter Ryan Lake. “The bad taste from 2008 is fading.”
The bad taste Lake refers to stems from a series of hard knocks for Dunegrass, which some might say began in 2007, when Empire folk hero and original Dunegrass founder Mike Vanderberg died suddenly while working on site preparations for the summer show.
The death of Vanderberg – who was so passionate about his festival that each summer he went by the name Mike VanDuneberg – was an ominous indication of what was to come.
In 2008, just days before the ever-growing festival was to open, festival-site neighbors brought a lawsuit in hopes of stopping it. The show went on, albeit farther inland (disappointing to many concertgoers because its proximity to Lake Michigan had always been a part of its pull), but it was still beset by power outages, rainstorms and cost overruns that left dozens of vendors and musicians unpaid.
But in 2009, just three months before the beleagured festival’s opening date, promoter Ryan Lake took the helm to help the once-legendary festival change course. Key among the changes he’s made was the festival’s move from the Village of Empire to a plot of land owned by the Empire Eagles just down the road off of M-72.
This year, he’s looking to move once again, this time to a bigger site in Almira Township, near the Lake Ann Airport. “The Eagles’ [land] was always a temporary location,” he says.
If approved by the township board at its May meeting, Lake says the new location would give fans more room to spread out and plenty of wooded camping sites for overnight attendees. “It’s a hundred acres of land on a 320-acre plot, and a lot of trees.”
“A lot of people are excited,” he says. “I’m really positive … music is an integral part of all our lives.”
The 2011 Dunegrass Music Festival is slated to run August 5 through 7. For more information on ticket sales, performance lineup and news, click here: dunegrassmusicfestival.org.
