Brian Cohen presents St. Louis’ first indie music festival in the heart of Forest Park.
Kelly Glueck
– Staff Writer –
Sun, 10 hours of music, action painting, Frisbees, and a ton of RayBans. That’s not all this LouFest had in store for its concert-goers. The two-day event held in Forest Park on Aug. 28 and 29 cost $38 for a single-day pass or $67 for the full experience. It featured many local food and boutique vendors as well as offering its guests a variety of educational resources and creative outlets.
“LouFest was based off a proven model,” said LouFest mastermind Brian Cohen. “Get a bunch of people together in a park, throw up a couple of stages, stack the lineup with great bands, and make sure there’s plenty of food, drinks and porta-potties.” Originally from Austin, Texas, home of the nationally respected Austin City Limits, Cohen said he had become fairly familiar with the music festival scene and sought the same for his new home here in St. Louis.
With his model intact and a growing group of support, Cohen was faced with the challenge of providing quality entertainment. He knew that he needed to speak to his potential audience in order to find relevant acts, and what better way to communicate with his fellow St. Louis neighbors than Facebook? Cohen created a Facebook account, and through word of mouth, acquired his list of hopefuls.
Teaming up with Contemporary Productions, Cohen was able to book 18 national, international and local bands for LouFest’s two main stages, including Broken Social Scene, She and Him (featuring actress Zooey Deschanel), Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Built To Spill, and St. Louis’s own So Many Dynamos.
“LouFest was without a doubt the most efficient music festival – or gathering of people, for that matter – I have ever been a part of. I still can’t believe how smoothly things ran for a festival of its size in its first year. The tone was set just right and everyone was in great spirits. I suppose it’s kind of difficult to be in a bad mood when you’re at an awesome party in your city’s backyard, though,” said Araon Stovall, lead vocalist and percussionist for So Many Dynamos.
While the lineup was the majority of appeal, LouFest also featured an assortment of food and activities sponsored by several local vendors such as the St. Louis Science Center, the Plant Science Center, Whole Foods, Schafly brewery, KDHX-FM, and many more.
Similarly to other nationally recognized festivals such as Pitchfork and Bonnaroo, LouFest made being green cool and convenient. Near the stage, there was a refillable water station, where guests were invited to refill their water bottles, thus cutting back on the overuse of plastic bottles, while still keeping fans hydrated.
The festival also offered five recycle stations, each with a handful of staffers eager to help ascertain if disposables were part of the recycle, compost or landfill family. The vendors also offered compostable paper plates and plastic-ware to ease the carbon footprint.
Not only were the place settings sustainable for the event, but the food that the local vendors used was exclusively local produce and was also competitively priced with easy to understand labels posting options for vegans and vegetarians.
“We’re drawing in lots of different kinds of fans to the event, so we want people to be comfortable with food options,” Cohen said.
When comparing the food selection with the food available at Pitchfork in Chicago, concert-goer Jacob Etter said, “Personally, I think LouFest had better food overall. There seemed to be a slightly better selection, and I enjoyed it more anyway.”
While it was important for Cohen to create a sustainable festival that offered something for everyone, he could not leave out families.
“We want LouFest to have something for everyone. So developing a kids area with fun and educational activities makes it much easier for parents to get out and enjoy the festival as well.”
The Kids Village offered children and adults the opportunity to participate in a selection of art projects and music lessons, while also providing a rock climbing wall and a PlayStation 3 arcade. The Folk School of St. Louis hosted a series of sing-alongs for the kids, and taught them some simple basics of folk music. Whole Foods offered healthy snacks, and the St. Louis Science Center and Plant Science Center offered bean maracas, sun prints, UV beads and paper chromatography.
Terry Woodford-Thomas, a member of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, explained why UV beads were a great idea for children. “They are great because they remind the kids that they are in UV light and it helps to remind them that they need to apply sunscreen. It’s really something fun and educational, and I think that’s what we were really going for here.”
The festival brought an estimated 8,000 people together, educated them, fed them, and filled Forest Park with the sounds of 18 distinguished and breakthrough Indie and folk bands, thus putting St. Louis back on the music map.
So what’s in store for next year? Cohen said, “So if people like it and they support it, I think in a few years LouFest could be a national destination festival. We have the perfect location, a city that is supporting us, and local fans that seem excited for this kind of event. Growing LouFest to three days and more stages is definitely a possibility.”
