Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Where The Heart Is
Family, music, sustainability expand with series
Last year’s inaugural Homegrown Music Festival at the Byrd’s Adventure Center in Ozark brought music-loving families together for a sustainability-minded, kid-friendly festival. And now it’s expanding to include a quarterly music series.
“We knew we wanted to do smaller scale events throughout the year, so after last year’s festival, we focused on finding a location,” says Jessica Sumner, lead coordinator for the series as well as the festival. “A lot of people can’t go for three days to a music festival, or don’t want to, or couldn’t get off work. So that’s why we want to take a touch of the festival vibe and put it on this concert series. It’s all the same product; we’re just presenting it in a different way.”
And that different presentation found its home at the Mount Sequoyah Center. Formerly a training center for missionaries with the Methodist Episcopal Church, the venue is now a nonprofit event center available to the community. And it was exactly what Sumner was searching for.
“I wanted to do a one-evening event, but I wanted space. I wanted to do kind of a hybrid of a normal show in town, but with touches of festival type-things — like food trucks and campfires. It didn’t have to be on Dickson Street, but I wanted it to be close. So that’s kind of a tall order in downtown Fayetteville.”
When she found the venue, Sumner says management let her team unscrew all the old pews from the floor in the auditorium and carry them out. They set up a bar in the back, they brought in good music, and they sold out their first event.
“It was a rainy, yucky, Valentine’s night, but we sold out!” Sumner recalls. “It was an awesome night, and we knew that this is it, for sure. This is our spot. But the thing is, we want every date to be different.”
The first A51 concert (so named for the sign outside the building — “Auditorium51”) was a 21-and-up, date-night event. Saturday’s show with Nashville group Smooth Hound Smith and local darling Dana Louise is an intimate, family-friendly affair with lawn games and a food drive benefiting Fayetteville Animal Services. Unfortunately, due to weather, the event has been moved to the Chancellor Hotel — but all the entertainment is coming along! The next concert, hosted on Halloween night, will be “all out weirdo,” and all the proceeds from the events (minus donations for the benefiting charity) will support the music festival in August.
“It was another way for us to keep our name relevant throughout the year without just sharing pictures of the festival” on social media, Sumner says. “No one wants to see all year long what you did at a summer festival, so it was a way for us to engage with our fans and make new fans and talk about the festival through the concert series.”